Heaven and Earth
by themiscyra
Summary: AU fic about an original character with strange, paranormal abilities who develops particular ties with Walt and Sawyer. Yes, it's one of those icky 'Noncannon female falls for the cowboy' fics. See disclaimer for more. Spoilers for both Season 1 and Seas
1. Disclaimer: Before You Read

**Disclaimer:**

This story is definitely, without a doubt, AU (alternate universe). Though it will follow the general outcomes of the episodes so far, the adage of a character kind of messes with the whole idea of perfect continuity. That being said, this fanfic is fairly up-to-date as far as the episodes go, and there are certainly spoilers in it for the first season. As I don't know how long it will run for at this time (it's for my amusement rather than actually trying to get anywhere, lol), I can't say exactly what episodes it covers.

Now, with the technical stuff covered: as you may have noticed, I talked about adding a character in. Her name is Heather, and I suppose she could be considered a 'Mary Sue' like character. While I have at least attempted to develop a certain character with her (which is, unfortunately for me, somewhat close to the newly acquired Ana's), there is without question, romantic intrigue between her and Sawyer. This alone, I know, is Mary Sue fodder, since he's the token bad-boy with a past. I tried to handle it responsibly, but hey—this is, once again, for fun. It's not meant to be serious.

One of the main themes so far in this fanfiction is the occurrence of supernatural events, as well as Heather's supernatural experiences. If you're not into the whole paranormal side of the island, then stop here. No really, don't waste your time.

Suggestions are, of course, welcome—but understand that if you totally rip into this (and hey, if you have that kind of time on your hands, feel free) I won't care. Again, this isn't anything serious. It's my own cathartic release exercise. Deal with that as you may.

Rating is for sexual suggestion (which has not developed into anything more so far), as well as frequent cursing.


	2. Before 815: A Backstory

"Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every day.  
You learn to live like an animal, in the jungle where we play."  
Guns 'N' Roses

**Chapter One** _  
_

_Where am I?_ Is her first thought, lying on her back on uncomfortable ground, staring up at the sunlight filtering in through the leaves of tropical plants above her. _Oh. _The memories of roughly two weeks (it's hard to tell, and she only knows a real estimate by the lunar phases) come back to her; she sits up immediately, brushing off the ants that had begun to climb over her, and gathers her things. The fire she had set up is not even smoldering down—it had probably died quite a while ago, and it hadn't been big to start with.

The hunger is the first thing to hit, but it always is. Heather has, however, supported herself well enough. The time she had spent in Africa had not been any walk in the park, and she knew a thing or two about what things could be eaten, and how to get to them. She had even managed to catch herself a couple of fish at one point with the rods she had found… well, found was a loose term. In all actuality, she had gone digging through the luggage compartments of what was left of the plane after it crashed, and had stolen them—but what did it matter? The person she took them from was dead anyway.

However, there had been those tracks, which raised their own questions.

Heather had awoken after the crash, still strapped into her seat. The sight had been gruesome—the man next to her was dead, and there were oxygen masks hanging down like eerie tentacles, grasping at the faces of corpses, not unlike those Alien movies were the scorpion things would plant an egg inside someone's chest. Then again, she had always had an over-active imagination, part of which landed her in this situation in the first place. After wriggling herself free (she had to cut away a portion of the seat belt using the razor from a bathroom bag that had exploded nearby), she did a quick survey of the plane—it was the front portion, and there was no middle or back to be seen. There were no pulses, and she had checked every single body… even the ones that were obviously dead. She had felt obligated to.

The cockpit had been a different story… there was blood coating the broken windows, not to mention what looked like a long red tongue of it still sticky on the isle, running downwards when she woke up. How she managed to live while everyone around her was dead was a question she saved for later. Without a moment's hesitation, directly after checking the cockpit and seeing the mess there, Heather had gone through most of the luggage—whatever wasn't covered in blood or brains (and a good deal of it was). She managed to recover a large, decently suited backpacked, and piled it full of what she thought may eventually come in handy—she'd dump in prescription medications, a couple of watches, and was nearly overjoyed to find a Swiss Army Knife—there was also the odd paperback novel here and there which she kept without really thinking. The rest of the space in the bag was saved for clothes (her own she could not find, and she simply took what looked like it would fit her, and threw it in), the fishing poles (two of them) she carried by hand.

The morality of this had occurred to her, but the woman was a born survivor; for that matter, if those people were dead, they wouldn't be missing any of it. Perhaps she was a bit manipulative, lacked a proper respect, but that was a concern for another day. She tried out several of the cell-phones she had pilfered, but none received reception. Heather had amused herself momentarily with the grim thought of stringing up all of the cell-phone commercial actors up by their intestines, but this was stopped short when she saw the tracks—clear boot outlines in the mud by the plane.

They were all jumbled, as if someone had been trying to run, and had fallen—then disappeared all together, somehow only carefully preserved in that one spot. It had been the most heartening sight, and the only thing that kept Heather from losing all hope (she did not ever seriously consider suicide: she was—as she continually reminded herself—a survivor, and was accustomed to periods of solitude from her previous occupation).

She stands, hands on her hips, knowing that she'll have a better chance of finding someone if she walks along the beaches, or close to them—it'll be instinct to stay in possible sight of any ships or planes. For the past week, give or take a few days, she's only been able to travel a short distance—when trying to climb one tree for the fruit in it, she had slipped on some damp moss growing on one of the branches, and unceremoniously fallen. Luckily, she did not break her ankle, and had only twisted it, knew better to walk on it whenever it was swollen and maybe worsen it.

Of course, there was always the sneaking fear that some rescue plane or boat would come, and she would be left, stranded.

Now, however, for the past two days, she has been walking—she doesn't think she's going in a circle, but it's hard to tell, because the compass she filched seems to be off on her account. _I have to be going long-ways across this fucking island or something,_ she thinks. After all, it can't be that big. She must have gotten mixed up somewhere. As she walks, she thinks about what led her here, alone on a tropical island.

It had first started when she was in college: she took a semester abroad with the Peace Corps, and worked in Africa (ever-so cliché, she had been one of those young students feeding children with AIDS and such). Of course, that had only been the start of it. Heather had never been one to like being 'rooted', not even as a child—and when the opportunity came to travel further, down to the surrounding villages, she took it without hesitation. There had been something unspeakably liberating about being in a small group (which only got smaller as time went on and people went home, went back to their universities, filled to the brink with Africa and sick of it), not to mention the wilderness was endlessly appealing to her. She liked the feeling of relying on herself, liked the namelessness of shifting in and out of villages.

Somewhere during this time her own experience with photography began, and she kept a well documented set of journals—averaging about 2 entries a day, with the addition of pictures whenever she had them developed (after a while she invested in a Polariod). A part of her always knew that she was looking for something, just her conscious mind didn't know _what_—only went on with the assurance that once she found it, she'd know.

Usually natives were not too happy to have her around, but she did her best to appease them. Eventually she became a familiar face, and often brought quantities of relatively cheap staple foods with her, and would share with the tribe (and one of the best ways to bond anywhere is by a show of food—Heather knew that much). It got to the point where in a few tribes she would be invited to watch the rituals, even dance in them once or twice. There was always a feeling there, like an unseen current running underneath a calm surface: it was an itch she couldn't scratch, and she needed more of it.

Then, she finally found what she was looking for: it was a staggeringly hot day, and was only made worse by the fire roaring nearby in the hut she was crouched in. She did not have this on video record, or even pictures of it—the tribe elder, a medicine man of sorts, had 'asked' (more motioned) her to leave them both aside. It was a decision that still plagued her to this day.

There was a young girl who had been attacked by a wild dog—possibly rabid. There were rips and tears all along the girl's arms and legs, and it was clear that she had lost a lot of blood. Immediately Heather had stopped, and turned to go get her bags, which at least had some first aid materials in them, but the elder had placed a hand on her arm, pulled her back. Somehow dazed, unable to command her body, she had come back, sat where she was motioned to, and watched.

There was a ritual, which she could tell was done hastily—the elder was aware that the girl was dying. He lay his hands over what appeared to be the worst wound, a gaping hole that nearly exposed the girl's ribs. What Heather saw then has haunted her ever since: the wounds began to close, began to heal somehow, and the girl's breath went from ragged to smooth, until (maybe an hour later) she appeared to not be harmed at all, only sleeping. The elder looked very tired indeed, and there was still blood on his hands, though it was drying.

He and Heather had shared a moment, where she was stuck dumb—not only by what she had witnessed, but _why_ she had been invited at all. After all, there was no question that with her pale skin and sharp features she was an outsider. _We are not savages,_ his gaze had seemed to say.

She had been sold for life. When it came time in two months to go back to the university, Heather dropped out. She called her parents, told them that instead she'd been going to a college in South Africa, and that the part of her tuition they paid for could be mailed to her. Of course, they didn't like this idea, but they were supportive. Heather used the money not to go to any college, but to keep herself on a research team. This did well enough while it lasted and she kept up the charade for a good 16 months, until her parents found out. Shortly after Heather stopped talking to them, and the checks stopped as well.

For the next few years she lived out of the back of a beat-up (but reliable, and that was what counted) Jeep—sometimes there would be a companion between villages (and in the event that the companion was male, this could lead to sex, on rare occasions—mostly whatever interest in having sex anywhere in Africa she had had, was crudely beaten out of her by her first year or two): usually it was just her. She sold some of her written articles and some of her pictures, took up research projects, and barely made it by. Eventually, about nine months before the plane crash, Heather came to a hard decision.

She wanted to try to show the world what she had witnessed—she wanted to expose the secret of that tribe, of the healing. The woman had only ever seen it as powerful as that first night, but her eyes (and something that went far deeper than sight) had been opened, and she could sense it everywhere. Mostly, she wanted funding from a university, some way to keep continuing her research, and presenting it to the public.

There was, as one may have expected, the nagging sensation that she was "selling out" something sacred for cash. It was a low, terrible thing to do (and she knew that in her gut, knew it in her dreams), but perhaps it could have good ends, even if the means were terrible—maybe it would help raise interest in Africa, raise awareness of the constant struggle for tribes to retain cultural identity. Then again, her discovery might only prove to be a fad for big businesses to cash in on, like whites trying to emulate the shaman-traditions of the people they had slaughtered, whose land they had stolen. _Well, you are an American at heart, aren't you?_ She had often thought, sick with the decision, and sick that she could try to make light of it. _That's what you're best at—selling culture to the masses at the expense of others. It's the American dream, honey._

Heather sent out some of her journals, enticing landscape and animal pictures, but the scientific community didn't bite—didn't want anything to do with her, ever skeptical of something that smacked of paranormal activity. Then, a film director in Sidney contacted her (which, as she spent much of her time out on the plains, was easier said than done), paid for her airplane ticket there, if she'd discuss an idea for a movie with him. Things there went well enough, and Heather was somewhat settled whenever she learned that he was interested in a documentary-esque film—not something purely fictional, something he could beef up and sell as a psuedo-action thriller hit.

Again though: guilt enveloped her—a documentary was better than an action movie, but a research book was better than that, and even better? if she had decided not to turn in someone's tradition for personal gain at all.

But they bought her a ticket for her flight to Los Angeles, primarily to Hollywood, and she had gotten a hold of her parents, was going to see them after six years of not talking or writing, and she busied herself with worrying about that. She had changed a lot in those years: Heather had come to Africa as a far too-thin college student who thought she knew everything about the world, and now her skin was darker, and there was definite muscle tone under it—not the kind one got from working out everyday, but the kind that develops out of necessity. She was still probably a bit too much on the thin side, but that began to right itself as she stayed for a few weeks in Sidney on the film director's tab.

Even her eyes had changed—before they had been dark brown, but they were lighter, if just slightly—one of the only things that stayed the same was her hair, which was black and retained its color because she mostly kept it hidden under a cowboy hat during the day (the villagers, especially the children, had loved this, enjoyed borrowing it while she was there).

The time came, and she boarded flight 815—there was a tremor in her gut for a moment, but she had chalked that up to regular, expected nervousness. What she didn't like about being around civilization again was that it was so _busy_, after living out in the wilds of Africa so long, she had gotten used to general calmness, if punctuated every once in a while by something shocking or truly frightening. Around all the cars and the electricity (she hated living in a hotel because she felt like she could hear all the TVs in the building, and had to unplug every appliance in her room) she could barely feel that current, the something that had been so strong, almost tangible back in her solitude, back in Africa.

The last thing that she remembered was watching the stewardesses begin to strap themselves in, and then the oxygen masks falling; there was a mad scramble where she yanked one over her mouth—then blackness.

"This has to be some kind of cruel karma," Heather murmurs to herself, shaking off the memories. "Has to be." She isn't normally one to talk to herself, but doesn't bother stopping it—these are extenuating circumstances, after all. She pushes aside a tall bush, and what she sees stops her dead in her tracks—jaw hanging wide. There are people milling about, and some walk in and out of caves—there are bags set up around plots of blankets, little beds: a camp.

"I'll be damned."


	3. Introductions

**Author's Note: **I want to say thanks for the review to Tawney, because I honestly didn't think anyone would bother reading this (I made the story description pretty boring after all). I take my characters relatively serious, even if I don't take the plot or situations so much so. Hope you enjoy.

**

* * *

**

"Don't sit there and play just--so frank, so straight, so candid,  
So thoughtful, so gracious, so sound, so even-handed."  
OKGO

**Chapter Two**

"You were alive? In the front part of the plane?" After wondering around aimlessly for a bit, someone realized that Heather was obviously not in touch with what was happening, and had brought her to the man she was now standing before: his name was Jack. After listening to her story, his jaw is slack—he asks her questions while checking up on her. Her figure is wiry and her clothes hang too loosely on her body from the sparse diet, but otherwise she is in good health (and can see a few eyes following her fishing rods more intently than anything else). "Was anyone else-"

"No." Watching him closely, she can see why he was their leader. She had been informed that they had been in that portion of the plane for a short while… but Heather found it difficult to follow their conversation during that—they kept coming back to some kind of 'monster'.

"I should have checked," Jack says under his breath, and again: the leader, taking the guilt, taking the blame.

"How could you 'av, mate?" Another man chimes in—this one is blonde, and Heather is about an inch taller than him. _Charlie._ _Remember their names._ "With that bloody thing chasin' after us-"

"I checked everyone." Jack and Charlie both look at her, Charlie with an eyebrow raises and Jack with sort of measuring wonder; other's pass by, some stopping in to listen for a moment, but mostly without too much interest—many don't realize that she's come from a different part of the plane. "There was no one else."

"Hell! Everyone? There must 'av been three dozen of them!"

Heather looks at the ground, runs a hand through her hair: "I checked all of them." The scene comes to her again—sliding on their blood, how it was more climbing than walking because of the odd angle of the plane, how she had to step on piled bodies in order to check others—gruesome, overwhelming if she thinks about it for too long. Both Charlie and Jack seem to be at a loss for words for a moment, before Charlie chimes in.

"That must 'av sucked." As Jack and Heather give him an identically incredulous looks, the British man stands, mumbles a goodbye, and heads away. Jack turns his attention back to Heather, and leans in closer, lowering his voice.

"Did you see anything while you were out there?"

"I saw tracks, most have been from one of you, leading away from the-"

"No. Did you see something…" The doctor seems to be at crossroads, and Heather understands that he is a very practical man, probably struggling with asking her a very unpractical question. "There was something there that day that we went up there. It killed a man—pulled him right out of the cockpit."

"All the blood," Heather nods, barely audible.

"Right. We ran, and we got away."

"What was it?"

"We never saw it." Heather thinks about this, and can see that it is straining Jack to be asking her these improbable things. He licks his lips a bit, and continues: "Did you ever hear anything?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Never?" Heather shakes her head, and Jack seems troubled by this—she wonders if he would be less perplexed had she said that yes, she had heard it. _But you don't want to lie to this one. Not unless you have to. He's a good man._ Jack gets up, holds a hand out to her to help her to her feet from her sitting position. "Glad you made it." It's an awkward thing to say, and both of them know it, but her attention shifts as he walks away, to a stranger approaching her. She had seen him standing not so far away throughout the whole of the conversation, and now understood that he had been listening in.

He doesn't have to open his mouth before she understands his type, and what he's getting at: the cocky, self-serving jaunt says it all.

"Well hey there," He offers her a too-sure smile, and right away Heather's ears pick up the southern drawl to his voice—it's not overdone, just enough to be smooth, sexy. She isn't very impressed, but in spite of herself, she's interested (in that half-amused "What next?" sort of way). "Heard you was new."

"Heard you was eaves-dropping." The response is tongue-in-cheek without a doubt, and the man's act falters for a moment, as if deciding whether to continue his original 'plan of attack' or give up. He chuckles, and Heather's smirk becomes less pointed, more playful (it had usually come as a shock to those she traveled with, when she wasn't alone—the woman had always been fairly sociable, even after spending months alone). The man held out his hand.

"I'm Sawyer."

"Heather." She takes his hand, and it is rough and warm, encases hers—he doesn't overdue his grip, and she thinks, _He's done this plenty._ At this point there are several other's watching, and Heather isn't slow on the uptake: this Sawyer must be quite a character. She had spent enough time in tribes that didn't speak a word of English, and body language was always a dead give away.

"See you around then. Maybe come see me on the beach sometime." He begins to walk past her, keeping it short and sweet—an effective tactic, and even though she knows she's falling for it, Heather bites.

"The beach?"

"Oh, yeah." The man smiles, and she had the feeling that he's feeling all too accomplished. "This here at the caves only a few of us. There are more down at the beach. It's a big too… close up here." With that he walks away, shouldering a backpack. Heather doesn't watch him go, because she knows that he'd like that. There are whispers that die as she looks around, but she catches the gist of it—Sawyer is a 'bad guy' and is undoubtedly trying to make some kind of ally for himself in Heather. Whether he's doing this for an actual reason, or just for the hell of being manipulative, she doesn't know.

What she does know is that she's got a hand for that business herself.


	4. Dinner on the Beach

"Didn't want to steal your thunder,  
wouldn't want to play your game."  
AC/DC

** Chapter Three**

"You're a reading man?" Heather asks, coming to a stop—she's decided to do some exploring, because it's still relatively early in the afternoon. Sawyer is lounging in front of his small shack, has a battered paperback book lying open on his lap. He looks up, smirks, and she can immediately see that it's good-natured because he's willing it to be, that he's really just sizing her up, wondering how useful she'd be.

"Only since we crashed on this heap. Looking for something?" He squints against the sunlight, peering up at her.

"I hear you're the man that's supplied around here?" A short investigation among the others at the caves had revealed that much, and a fair deal more—her summary of him had proved to be accurate by their accounts.

"Yes, well I suppose I am. Unfortunately, nothing comes free." He smiles: there clearly isn't anything unfortunate about it for him.

"I found three books, salvaged them from the small area that I somehow ended up in whenever I really came-to. I figured it might not help anyone survive, but a book's a damn good thing to pass time, which we all seem to have a lot of." Sawyer is looking at her hard, judging again, placing her. "One's just a romance, but the others are westerns," Heather add in a knowing sort of voice, offering her own smile, hands on her hips—the glint in his features fades, and he looks at his boots for a moment, laughs lightly.

"What do you want?"

"Nothing for now. Call it an investment for the future." She doesn't know how he'll react to this, if he'll not find it as open-hearted as it is at face-value. Heather can tell that he grasps the real weight of what she's asking, and then he laughs, nodding.

"How about we just call it a favor, and I owe you one." However, she can see something dark there. _Investment,_ she thinks. _Future investment. Term hits something solid with him?_ And then for no reason at all, she thinks, _Two weeks._ There's a flutter in her brain that carries with it the sound of a briefcase snapping shut.

_It's coming back,_ Heather thinks, and she can feel that familiar (though always strange) sensation of some kind of charge flowing around her, pressing lightly against her skin and passing by. _It's here too. The feeling…stronger, even._ She doesn't know what that means, but she decides that it'd be good to keep tabs on it: watch for it, whatever it might show her—ever since landing on this island, it's like she's been on the receiving end of some kind of mental static. This is the first message that came out clearly.

"Sounds good. I'll bring 'em by later today." She nods to him, and continues walking. There is a reason to this abruptness—letting him feel replaceable, or at least not crucial, the same strategy he had tried to use with her. It's about drawing him in and then turning the tables: that is, she might have worked for the good of the world not so long ago, but manipulation is a born skill.

"Hey, so what are you doing now?"

"Fishing." Before the conversation can develops, she leaves. While she never ended up catching lots of fish (like Jin, whom she'd later come to know), she did catch ones that were bigger, and the process was less strenuous. It was also without the risk of stepping on a sea urchin.

Later in the day, after finding a suitable fishing spot, she heads back to the caves with three nicely sized, taking them directly to Sun (earlier she had seen the Korean woman cleaning the fish her husband had caught). What passes then is a rather strange transaction, especially for any bystanders looking on.

First, Heather gives the woman two of the fish, and then motions to one of the cleaned ones fish lying before Sun, in a trade for her last fish. Sun doesn't really understand why the new woman would feel the need to trade it, if she after all did give her two of the three fish for 'free'. She consents however, and Heather seems pleased enough with this.

Jack, talking to Kate, nods toward Sun and Heather, after both of them watched the exchange: "You know who that reminds me of?"

"Who?" Kate asks, but has a feeling she knows what he will say.

"Sawyer. The trading, at least. As if there's some kind of unspoken rule that we aren't here just to help each other, and that you can't get something for nothing."

"Oh, stop it. She's not that bad," Kate rolls her eyes and smiles, but she understands. The woman, Heather, she's playing a different angle than Sawyer, but it's still part of the same game.

"No, she's not." Jack agrees somewhat playfully, but his tone is tired, worn out. Heather leaves Sun, carrying the fish that is now more filet than anything—tail, head, bones, and innards had already been disposed of. She goes through the two other small bags she had brought with her when she found the caves, comes out with three dog-eared paperback novels, putting these into her current backpack. Kate and Jack watch this without saying anything, but Kate can feel Jack sigh deep next to her—new alliances meant more work for him. Heather turns, goes to leave.

"Heather, it's getting dark out there. You might want to stay here in the caves for the night-" She turns to the sound of Jacks voice, an eyebrow arched, body language showing no intention of the sort.

"Yeah, Jack's right. Why don't you stay for now?" Kate offers, watching Heather in a close way that Heather thinks she understands, but doesn't really like.

"Can't, I already told someone that I'd bring them something-"

"Sawyer." Kate asks skeptically, smirking. "Then it can _definitely_ wait."

"I'm not really one to lie," Heather says even-handedly enough, but there's some force to it. Kate's brow furrows, suddenly wondering if Heather knows anything about her, if there's meaning behind what she said. Seeing Jack start to say something, Heather cuts him off. "Oh, don't worry. I know he's using me as a rung step on, to boost his popularity, or position, whatever he thinks it is. My feelings aren't getting hurt." She smiles in a way that is none-too-sweet or naïve. "Honest."

_And maybe she thinks she's going to use him,_ Jack sighs to himself, as the woman heads out into the dusk.

"Sawyer?" She finds him sitting outside his tent, with a small fire burning near his feet.

"Didn't know if you were still coming," He says, looking up from the fire. In one hand Heather can see a half-eaten banana with a peel that is green even in the dim light, feeling more sure of her decision about bringing the fish. "What's that?" Sawyer asks, sneering a bit.

"Fish. If you're interested." She can see this settle over him, though he tries to play it off.

"A woman that keeps her word and brings dinner. I could get to like-"

"Don't push your luck. Figured you were the only person on this island that could manage to stow away a frying pan." Her tone is just curt enough to put him back in his place, make him uneasy. For the first time he's curious of whether she's aware of what he's doing, and is perhaps turning it back on him.

"Ain't no need to be hostile here, missy."

After a few moments, they have set up a make-shift grill, and the fish is sizzling well, has a pleasant aroma. Sawyer watches it with his jaw tight, hungry, while Heather digs the three books out of her bag, hands them to him. They talk easy for a while, and she's almost surprised—she wouldn't have thought that talking easy with such a character would be all too possible. There are times where they lapse into silence, and it isn't a rough, awkward silence—the ocean fills in the necessary background noises.

"So what brought you on that plane?" Sawyer asks. He feels like it's stooping pretty low, almost like asking someone where they're from as a 'get to know you' technique, only a step or two above talking about the weather. He wonders why he bothered once it's out—after all, the return question isn't one he's planned much for.

"Movie producer wanted to talk to me about a journal I wanted to get published. He wanted to make a movie out of it first," She stretches her legs in their loose-fitting blue-jeans, and he knows when someone's avoiding his question, or only answering what they want to.

"What about? Anything interesting?" Heather pauses for a moment, and then shakes her head, giving him a small smile. "Just a stupid documentary on safari life. Apparently that's where the new big trend is going to be, trying to build a more educated America or something." The lie is flawed (_More educated America? Come on, that reeks of bullshit._) but Sawyer accepts it, maybe knowing it's a lie. That in itself tells her something about him.

"And you?"

"Businessman," He answers with a smirk, cocking his head to the side. She laughs, pushes sand around with the toes of her boots. "What? Don't believe me?" He manages an air of humor, as if, _Yeah I know what you're laughing at, funny world, innit,_ but she sees through it without effort.

"No, I don't." Heather arches her eyebrows, and he watches her carefully, then shakes his head, letting her know that she can believe what she wants.

"Anyway, it's late, and some of us do need our beauty sleep. You're welcome to sleep in-"

"Nah, I'll stay out here by the fire." A short, very awkward pause elapses.

"Hey look, I wasn't saying-" He begins, trying to save the situation.

"I know. But someone needs to stay outside and guard the sleeping princess, right?" Heather leans back in her lawn-chair, looks up at him with bemusement. He looks back down with a questioning smile—Sawyer can't place her humor or her level of seriousness just yet, doesn't know whether or not it's right to laugh with her. "Night Sawyer." She slides down lower into the lawn chair, crosses her legs at the ankle, and watches the fire.

"Yeah, sure. Sweet dreams." There's a rustle of the tarp flap behind her, and then Heather's alone.


	5. Rhythms

**Author's Note:** I've taken Tawney's advice for now and brought down the rating. Whether the cursing becomes more apparent (and it does), I'll take it back up. Maybe I'll catch a few more people this way, though the fiction isn't really meant to be a crowd pleaser.

* * *

"I know what I want: you just take me through the motions.  
I know what I want, and that's more than you can say."  
Sum 41

**Chapter Four**

Within the week the two are nearly inseparable; she takes him fishing from time to time, they share meals. When Heather asks to look through his stash in his beach shack, Sawyer grudgingly allows her, but when she asks him what hole he is hoarding the rest of it in (she knows him enough to know that there is more, and that he's hiding it), he looks away. They go through the motions of bonding, but there's always a distance to it, a weariness. There's physical bonding in the sense of small pushes, shoulder nudges, and giving each other a hand up from time to time.

"So what do you think is happening between them?" Charlie asks Jack as Jack drops off fresh water. Jack looks up, follows Charlie's gaze to Heather and Sawyer. They watch as she plants a boot on the seat of his pants while he's kneeling over something; Sawyer however seems to have expected as much, spins on his heel and grabs her ankle. With a sharp tug she falls, undignified but laughing. He stands over her, offers a hand. She looks at it with suspicion for a moment, and Charlie and Jack can't tell what Sawyer is saying to her, but he bends lower, smile widening. She takes his hand, and he hoists her to her feet. Charlie snorts whenever Heather sticks her leg between Sawyer's, and topples him with an elbow to the chest.

"That's low!" They hear him shout, though in good humor, as Heather wriggles free and takes off down the beach, scooping up her backpack on the way. When she looks over her shoulder they can see her laughing. Sawyer shakes his head, sighs, and brushes the sand off. He looks about ready to settle down and read, but instead picks up the book and follows after Heather, walking.

"Well?" Charlie asks, and Jack sighs. He doesn't seem so amused by the display.

"They're both trying to use each other, and neither of them knows what for."

"Do you think there's any chance that-" Charlie starts, but stops from the look on Jack's face.

"I don't know."

"Yeah, sorry."

- - -

"Think you're funny, don't you?" Heather hears Sawyer coming up behind her. It's only shortly past one, about twenty minutes after their scuffle by his tent. She is gripping the fishing rod and leaning against a tree—this is not a part of the beach, but rather where the land is grassy, drops off straight into the water, better for the fishing she is doing. It's the place she came to fish her first night here.

"Funny? No. Clever though, I have my moments," She replies without looking up, eyes half-closed, almost dozing. Then she does look over to him slowly, tilting her head in a way that directly mirrors Sawyer's habit. Sawyer feels his heart jump in his chest, knowing that she's mimicking him, and doing a damn good job of it. On impulse he bends, kisses her brow, and can feel her go rigid against the tree, uncomfortable. There is a pause, where Heather can feel his breath warm at her temple, can smell that he wears cologne even on a stupid island. "Sweet of you," she exhales, and then looks away.

"I have my moments." Sawyer sits down, not directly next to her, probably wary that he has overstepped some kind of boundary. Heather goes back to her more relaxed position, and he settles into his book.

_Awkward,_ Heather thinks, risks a sideways glance at him, though he is further behind her than to the side. And then, eyes forwarding again, feeling a tug at her line (thankfully taking her mind off of it), she adds: _Awkwardly enjoyable._


	6. Cardtricks & Babysitting

We can live beside the ocean,

Leave the fire behind.

Swim out past the breakers—watch the world die.

Everclear

Chapter Five 

The next day Heather heads back out to the same spot, and on her way she is approached by Michael (and Walt, who is tightly grasping the dog Vincent's leash). She stops, smiles warmly—tries not to give the impression as some kind of outsider. Sawyer is by the caves, getting his antibiotic, which explains why isn't striding alongside her, toting a book.

"Hi there!" Michael calls, waving with one hand. The other is grabbing Walt's shoulder, leading him forward.

"Dad, I don't need a babysitter!"

"Hello," Heather says, already understanding.

"Hi, um, I'm going up to the golf range for a game, and I wanted to know if you'd watch my boy, Walt," He asks, bracing himself. She can already see the train of thought this required—he couldn't go to Sun now with the Jin problem (Heather is perceptive, and Sawyer may not be very much of one for gossip, but he's not adverse to putting his own spin on things, and she knows how to more or less weed out the facts), didn't trust Locke, and she was more of a familiar face even in her brief visits to the caves than some of the others. _Though he doesn't like asking me because of the rumors about me and Sawyer. _

"Yeah, sure. I'm going fishing actually, so he's welcome." Heather throws a smile to Walt, who does not return it, is angry and uncooperative in the way that only children (and she supposed, some grown men) can be. There are fifteen unbearable minutes on the walk there, and Heather gives him silence, waiting for the anger at his father to wear off. Without really speaking, she already feels a certain attraction to Walt, doesn't mind his company. It's not like Sawyer's: being with that man is like smooth sailing with wind in your sails, but always knowing that there are jagged rocks only inches below, ready to scrape out your hull if you get careless. The energy around Walt is calmer somehow—and when Heather thinks about the current that buzzes through everything on the island, is isn't necessarily softer around the boy, but clearer, less overwhelming and more direct.

"Do you like to fish, Walt?"

"Not really."

"Do you like magic?" He looks up at her sharply, gauging her.

"I don't believe in magic," Walt answers, and Heather thinks, _Pity, because it seems to believe in you. _

"Maybe you don't. Then card tricks?" He still seems apprehensive, but she can tell that the boy is warming to the idea. After all, children and adults alike loved card tricks, didn't they? Picking a spot in the shade, with a small strip of beach further off, Heather motions for him to sit, and he does, already shedding some of his anger. She takes out a deck of cards, which are relatively new (gleaned from the air-craft wreckage), and by the third go around, Walt is leaning forward, anxious, and has forgotten the displacement.

"How do you do it?" The boy asks her, astonished, jaw slightly ajar.

"Magician's don't reveal their secrets." Heather answers with a smirk, and his face falls. "But I've always hated that line. Besides, learning is half the fun." She knows that having something to do with his hands on his own time will make the island more bearable. After showing him a quick overview of the easier tricks, he sits back, playing with the cards, getting a feel for them.

"How did you learn to do this?" He asks, and Vincent is sitting at his side, pauses to sniff at the cards and then go back to panting.

"I used to spend a lot of time on the road—switching village to village in Africa, even. It's something to pass the time, and it always impresses the locals." She laughs lightly, and shuffles a hand through her hair, which is thick and unruly, especially with the constant salt air coming off of the ocean. "Sometimes too much." When Walt looks up, she gives him a wink, and she gets the first true smile out of him that she's seen. It fades quickly, and she is almost startled by the sudden change.

"I'm sorry that my dad pushed me on you."

"Walt, don't talk like that. I enjoy the company, I promise. Besides, who else would I show my card tricks?" He arches his eyebrows and gives her a certain look, and Heather chuckles. "No, I don't think Sawyer would like them." In a small voice, more to herself than to him, she adds, "He only likes what he can touch and hold, and magic isn't one of those things."

After a while they move more towards the ocean, and Heather sets to fishing while Walt practices at the card tricks. When she asks again if he wants to try fishing, Walt agrees, carefully setting down the cards before taking the rod. Not long afterwards, she helps him reel in a large fish, sealing their fast friendship.

Part of it is because of the circumstances, another part because she simply treats him with an openness and respect. Lastly though, and undeniably, there is a spark that exists between them. Something about him reminds her so much of that feeling she had during those rituals (even the first one, the _big_ one), and she swears that she can almost hear the island humming through the child. He's got 'the touch' in her way of explaining it, certainly more than she does, but that they share a bit of it gives them common, unexplainable ground.

Later on, as the island moves from afternoon to early evening, Heather and Walt head back to the caves, Vincent in tow (along with several fish, the biggest of which Walt caught). Michael looks eased by the sight of the boy, immediately stands up from the log he was sitting on. The boy holds up his catch with a triumphant smile, and grins back at her. She tilts her head back and smiles, an action she has subconsciously picked up from Sawyer (something that does not escape Jack or Kate). She tosses Walt the pack of cards, and he looks at it like he's been given treasure.

Heather makes the gesture of asking for one of the cleaned fish from Sun, and Sun smiles and nods. Heather takes it, and heads back towards the beaches. Sawyer is in his usual spot, though seems almost lost in thought. When he spots her, his countenance clears in a way that is like relief, and Heather feels happy intrigue at that.

"Haven't seen you around today," He begins, sounding casual and 'Don't you dare think I was worried' at once.

"Guess you haven't. I was asked to watch Walt for Michael today."

"Babysits and still has time to put food on the table," Sawyer drawls, a familiar jackass grin on his face.

"Bite me," She replies, but not without a smile. Within minutes the fish is cooking, and they're in their usual end of the day places. The smile at the ends of her lips gives her dry humor away, and she adds: "He's better company than some people on this island."

"Ouch," He responds, and then gives Heather a look that is more serious. Licking his lips, he starts, "You know, you could sleep in the tent. There is enough room." She gives a calculating glance, and he shifts his weight, palms open and facing her in a gesture of peace. "Okay, okay. Just trying to be hospitable is all. You've only been sleeping out here for days now." He turns stiff legged and feeling put-off for his efforts.

"Wait," Heather stands, takes his wrist. It is well muscled, and her fingers do not easily close around it. "Sure. It's going to rain anyway."

"That's all?" Sawyer asks with a smirk, nodding towards her hand on his wrist, and she lets go without hesitation.

"That's all."


	7. Bittersweet

"What were you doing for those eight and a half minutes?  
Was it mean, was it petty--or did you realize you were sorry, and that you loved them?"  
The Dismemberment Plan

**Chapter Six**

Later, Heather realizes that Sawyer was more or less telling the truth—there is enough room for them to sleep in the tent without too much trouble. There is a level of discomfort, in that both of them are trying not to seem uncomfortable at the closeness between them, the implications. She knows that he is only pretending to sleep, though he feigns it well enough—he wants desperately to appear casual even in an awkward situation. Heather can see why he might want to keep the unruffled attitude, but she doesn't feel it as necessary as he does. Sawyer is lying on his side, faced away from her, and she on her back, one arm slung over her eyes, the other lying on the ground above her head.

They are not touching, but she can feel Sawyer breathing. In her mind she can see his back, strong and broad, rising and falling smoothly: pictures a scene where she slides close to him, slinks an arm around his midsection, kisses him in the rough spot below his temple—knows that his reaction would not be surprise, and that it would not be coarse. The pig-headedness would be replaced by a sly amusement at first, which would give way to something deeper, closer to what he might be when he's not pretending to be what he is… at least until the daylight hours.

And Heather very much wants to know who Sawyer really is, because no one on this island is who they say they are, and she knows that—Jack seems to be the only one who is trying to play the game fairly, and that's why he's the leader: they all respect him for what they can't do themselves. Hell, she respects it. But Jack isn't the one that's really on her mind… instead she can't stop thinking of Sawyer's back, his legs, his perfectly untrustworthy smile.

Somehow, this makes it easier for her to decide that she will not go to him. His blue eyes, his cigarettes, his goddamn southern drawl: he's counting on them, probably always has, and she won't let them get to her. Besides—that's not part of this, right? Falling for him, especially for the bad-boy exterior, is giving him the advantage.

Heather rolls over, away from him—she can notice the barely-there hitch in his breathing, hearing her move. It begins to rain, a light rain thankfully, not enough to destroy their tent; only a short while after Sawyer falls asleep. _Rain helps him sleep easy,_ She thinks: for her, this is something better than cowboy boots or tough talk.

It's something real.

And it takes significantly longer, but sleep does find her.

- - -

It is early in the morning when Heather wakes; dim, phantom light filters through the tarp of the tent, making the objects heavy in shadows, alien. The first thing she thinks is that she is immensely comfortable, and decently warm (unlike the usual chill of being out on that lawn chair, with salt residue clinging to her clothes and hair). She wakes slowly, which is not something she has often had the luxury of.

Gradually then, she begins to realize that Sawyer is directly behind her, and she is cradled into him, with one of his arms draped across her stomach. Coming to this realization, she can't bring herself to jump up with any sort of indignity, and decides that it is not wrong of her to enjoy the relief of a single cozy moment in an environment that doesn't allow for much of it.

His breath on the back of her neck makes her stomach flutter, then tighten. She doesn't move much, turns her face towards him, her upper-body shifting, but it wakes him (or draws him out of the same half-sleep that she had been in). There is a brief second before he constructs his attitude, and in that moment, Heather sees contentedness, the same sense of relief. Then he plasters on his usual personality, and smiles winningly, lifting himself up slightly.

"Well good morning," He starts, leaning in closer.

"Sawyer, what are you doing?" Her tone is unimpressed, like a parent tired of a child's antics.

"What am _I_ doing?" His smile widens, eyebrows raised in mock innocence. Heather fights to keep the smile from her lips, but isn't completely successful—however, she does arch an incredulous eyebrow. "Listen honey, you came to me." His voice is somewhat rough in the morning, not yet with its outgoing smoothness.

"You're lying." She answers, same bored tone. However, she doesn't make any move away, can feel the tension between them, those strange blue eyes focused intent on hers.

"How's that?"

"Because I'm still on my side of the tent," Heather responds, not forgoing a short grin, which flashes triumphant in her eyes—Sawyer likes that expression, something he wants to relate to badly. He runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek and looks down for a moment in a gesture saying, 'you got me'.

"But you haven't moved away," He says, his body tensing slightly.

"But I haven't moved away," Heather agrees (voice hardly above a whisper).

Against better judgment, against what she told herself the night before, she lifts herself to him, kisses his neck—his facial hair is not a painful stubble, but scruffy and (as she's sure he's well aware of) attractive. When she kisses him again, higher and closer to his chin, he tilts his head and accepts it—this time she tastes him, and he lets out a groan that sends chills down her spine. Sawyer runs his hand behind her head, through her hair, and pulls her mouth to his. After a quick peak, she notes that he kisses with his eyes closed; as with the rain, she likes this about him.

Things progress, and he pulls her into his lap. His hands drift to her lower back, holding her tight, and hers are fists wound into his hair. Their mouths meet constantly, kissing like swimmers dragging for air.

"Sawyer? Hey Sawyer?" A man calls outside the tent, and Heather stops, watches his face. Sawyer says nothing, shakes his head, goes to kiss her again, when a man she is not familiar with barges into the tent, practically tripping over Sawyer's ankles. He takes one look at them and nearly stands straight up in surprise—knocking things over in his wake. Heather takes a look at Sawyer's face, and quickly holds his arms.

"Uhm, you might want to try getting the fuck out." When the man doesn't move, she shouts, "Now!" And then he does leave, starts running. Heather moves off and away from Sawyer, but doesn't release him.

"Let me go."

"I don't care what you say to him, just don't hurt him." She pleads, tired and frustrated.

"Well what the fuck did he have to-"

"I don't know, it's just easier to let it go. Let it go." He looks at her with his jaw set tight, and then sighs long and low.

"Thank you." It's not sound, but almost angry in itself.

"What? For what?" Heather narrows her eyes—Sawyer is less predictable than a few of the island's members, but this has come completely out of the blue.

"For not saying, 'This is stupid' or 'We shouldn't do this'." He sucks on the inside of his cheek, looks away. _This is important,_ she thinks, and watches him, her grip loosening and sliding to his wrist.

"It was, and we probably shouldn't have, if that's any consolation," Heather says with a bit of humor, trying to lighten the sudden darkness that has settled around Sawyer. She's seen it around him before (and it's around all the others too, but she spends more time with him than them) and she doesn't like it. Something's haunting him.

"Thanks for not saying it, though. I'm so sick of hearing women apologize for what they're about to do, so they can save some of that guilt later." He gives her a glaring look, brow furrowed deep with an anger that she is frightened by. _Not for me,_ she thinks, but that isn't very reassuring. It's a self-destructive hatred, and it oozes from him like a terrible sickness. Her face shows its concern—she doesn't try to hide it.

"Last I checked, men save their guilt too." She's gentle with it, but it's obvious what she's getting at—something he's not telling her, or at the very least, not owning up to himself. It isn't met to undercut him, but if there's a social grace she lacks, it's approaching sensitive subjects (there are always certain things that even sarcastic humor can't even diffuse).

"You don't know me," He responds, voice deep and cold. Fortunately, depth has never frightened her, and she knows anger like the back of her hand. Instead of being shocked or hurt, her jaw clamps shut—her words are terse, irritated as she rises.

"You're right. I don't." Heather turns and leaves without further word on the subject, leaving Sawyer to sit in his tent, all alone with his hair hanging in his face.


	8. Two's Company

**Author's Note: **The rating has again been raised to M, because the cussing only gets more frequent after this point, lol.

* * *

"Sink your teeth right through my bones, baby.  
Let's see what we can do."  
John Melloncamp

**Chapter Seven**

Heather returns around late afternoon—having left without her gear, she doesn't bring back anything to eat. She's spent the entire morning and afternoon thinking about what happened between them, and has come to a conclusion. The mind games need to end, and they both need to come clean about their intentions. Of course, that sounds nice if you're talking to someone who thinks straight-forwardly, not someone who deals in back alleys and hoarding holes and picking dead bodies. _Some of which you're guilty of yourself, so you can't put it all on him._

"Sawyer?" She calls, not seeing him at his usual spot outside his tent, reading a book. There are voices inside the tent, and after calling a couple more times (and hearing laughter) she pulls back the tarp. Kate and Sawyer (albeit in very non-compromising positions) are hunched inside, and by Kate's bag, Heather assumes that she's come to try to get something out of him. Immediately the talking stops, and that's when Heather's suspicions rise.

"I should go," Kate says quietly gathering her things. _Why?_ Heather automatically thinks. After all, what does she care if they two are talking with each other? But Kate is giving her glances like she's afraid she'll be attacked—Heather spins on Sawyer.

"So what the fuck did you tell her?" Kate hurries out of the opening in the tent, and now Heather is standing straight, Sawyer crouched inside. "What did you tell her about us?"

"What the hell are you talking about, 'us'?" Sawyer responds, standing himself (a good head over her).

"That's what you're doing, isn't it? You're implying that there's something between us, so that you can make Kate jealous? Is that it?"

"'Implying'? Kind of a weak word after this morning-"

"Fuck you! You don't even know what you want! You want to be close to someone, and you want to pretend you're not at the same time—it's like, like _highschool_!" Sawyer starts, and Heather already knows that it's going to be something slick, something infuriating. "Don't even. Just don't." She begins to gather her things, shoving them into her backpack as she goes. Sawyer watches with his mouth open, angry and belligerent at her for making him own up to his own game.

"Look, Heather, you don't have to go-" He undoubtedly sees this as an incredibly grateful extension of courtesy, but Heather is in no mood for giving half a damn. If he wants to treat her like she's fifteen, then fine—she will not, however, be used as leverage, drawing anyone else into the business.

"Fuck you."

"Well you know, you can kiss my ass! Just because _you're_ jealous of Kate-" His words cut short when she swings her heavy backpack into his gut with all her force. As he doubles over, she leans down into his face, and her words are a hiss of rage.

"You try too hard, asshole. And it _was_ stupid."

He shouts obscenities at her as she leaves; Heather is nearly jogging, heading directly for the caves.

- - -

"John, you going hunting?" Heather's face is flushed, but she is not panting, her eyes are bright, intense. It does appear that this is the case—his knives are out, looks as if he's finishing up packing them back.

"Actually yes, why?" As he looks up though, he sees the anger that has control of her, and drops the question—he more or less can guess the answer.

"Heather? What are you doing up here?" Jack asks, and Heather can see Kate behind him, watching her carefully. _She's told him that Sawyer and I have had a falling out, or something,_ Heather thinks, adding insult to injury. Why do they have to be in her business? Why does Sawyer have to make it so damn easy for them to be? At the look of utter contempt she gives him (and the rest of the world, at this point), his jaw drops slightly—but he recovers quickly. "What's wrong?"

"She's going to be hunting with me today," Locke interjects. Heather is grateful for it, for his understanding that she doesn't feel like broadcasting her personal issues. Jack looks from her to Locke and back again.

"I don't think that's such a good idea. It's dangerous and-" Heather reaches one hand behind her and in one liquid motion, draws a knife from Locke's belt and sends it flying through the air. Within the second, the hilt is protruding from a knot on a nearby tree—blade sunk deep into the wood there. There are things one learns after a few rough years of outdoors living.

There is silence for a few moments, and then Kate steps forward, walks almost all the way up to her.

"I'm sorry," She's looking at the ground, and Heather sighs, letting her muscles loosen somewhat.

"Don't be Kate. I'm not angry with you, which is why I'm not going to let him use me against you, or whatever he's trying to do." She meets Heather's eyes, and in that moment Heather is closer to her.

"Can I talk you out of going hunting though? Maybe you should cool down first."

"No. I'm killing a pig tonight one way or another," Heather manages a bit of wry humor from her rage, and Kate smiles, sad but understanding.

"Okay then."


	9. An Accident

**Auther's Note: **Cue the start of excessive paranormal activity.

* * *

"Well I never pray, but tonight I'm on my knees yeah."  
The Verve

**Chapter Eight**

Locke and Heather move easily—she doesn't like something about him, it makes her uncomfortable, but they work decently well together, moving on cue and without speaking. Things are so dull as to be boring, and already she has let go of some of her anger. She supposes that she's overreacted to Sawyer, but she knows that if upsetting Kate wasn't his main prerogative, then it was certainly an added benefit.

But she keeps thinking about him falling asleep with the rain, kissing with his eyes closed—more or less telling her that he can't stand when women place their guilt on him, make it his decision. Heather has lost much of that rage, and is left feeling confused, hurt even.

Then there is a scream that shatters her own introspective thought—freezes the blood in her veins. Heather is running before she realizes she is moving, before the yell begins to stop. It's the scream of a child, and she immediately knows which child.

Not too far away, she finds Walt lying on the ground, cradling his stomach—the grass and dirt around him has been stained a deep, dark red that terrifies her. Just a hair behind her Locke comes through, and for the only time she's known him, she hears a noise of utter dismay rise out of his throat.

She immediately drops to the ground, and Walt is shaking—there is no recognition in his eyes, and his face is blank. Heather lifts his hands slightly, and is immediately inclined to vomit, at the site of his intestines showing through. There are hoof marks in the damp soil nearby. Locke pushes her aside, lifts Walt, and she does not protest—she would certainly carry the boy back, but Locke is probably stronger and better for it.

Instead, she settles for racing back to the camp as quickly as possible, Locke right on her heels.

There are no tears across her cheeks, and her throat is hot and burning. By the time she reaches the camp (screaming "Jack!" all the while), her arms are covered in her own blood where plants and bark have cut her. Upon seeing her and then Locke, carrying Walt and the three of them covered in blood, there are short gasps and screams. Somehow Heather spots Sawyer—his eyes wide and mouth agape—and her heart aches; _He's come to make amends, and then this?_

Michael appears quickly, and this is when the true chaos begins—everyone getting too close, and Jack screaming to give him air. Michael is in hysterics, shoving and punching anyone that gets too close to his boy. Jack takes a look at the wound, and even though the horror only flashes there for a second, Heather catches it, catches it cold.

Sawyer's eyes meet hers before and they are filled with guilt and despair. She breaks the contact, can't bare it.

"He must have been following us, and a boar gored him. Must have been a big one too—the tracks all around him were huge," Locke's voice is not it's usual calm, but shaking and weak. Michael holds Walt's hand mumbling incoherent things and sobbing.

Heather has been watching Jack, and what she has seen is not reassuring; there is nothing he can do to save Walt, the chances are impossible. He will try, of course, but there is no hope in him, only desperation. A few bystanders get too close to take a look, and Sawyer quickly steps in front of them, none-too-gently pushing them back.

A steady fear is rising in Heather, high above even the terror and panic.

"Jack?" She croaks, and he looks to her, and she sees him as a human, not as the doctor, not as the saint. Her throat is hoarse and sore. "Jack?"

"What?"

"I have to do this."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm sorry. This is going to hurt." With that, Heather takes his wrist, and _pushes_--she focuses on all the rituals, all the tribes, the medicine men and women. Lastly she sends him the image that eventually landed her on the damned island itself: the healing. She senses him trying to pull away (because having someone force their memories into your mind cannot be a pleasant feeling), but she doesn't let go until it's all there, willing him to see and understand, knowing that he'll have to overcome his hard-line devotion to practicality. When she lets him go, he backs away as if shocked—Locke is watching her with suspicion. "You can't help him Jack. I can." Her voice is like steel now, undeniable. "But I have to start now." He is afraid, terrified of what she has shown him, but there is an ounce of understanding—an understanding that his heart accepts, that his gut agrees with, but his doctor's mind refuses to believe.

"Can you?"

"I need to try."

"What do you need?" He asks, determined to put himself to use, a lifetime of training urging him to do whatever he can.

"A torch, and water. And a screen when you can… everyone watching isn't going to help." Without questions, Jack stands, jogs to go get what she asked for—Locke goes for the tarp that has served as Jack's operating station. She can hear Sawyer glue himself to Jack, running to help. Within moments Heather has what she asked for. She sets the torch into the ground next to her, and scoots close to Walt, crossing her legs Indian fashion; leaning forward, she takes Michael's hand, and for the first time since they came back he actually sees her.

"Michael, I'm going to do everything I can. I swear it. But you have to let him go for now." He looks at her like she's crazy, and she supposes that she must sound that way. When Michael doesn't react, Sawyer (who has now added one more person to the behind the scenes population) starts—but with only the slightest turn of her head, he stops again. "Please, Michael." She stares deep into his eyes, her mouth drawn into a thin line in her determination, preparing herself for what must be done.

And then, surprising them all, Michael sets Walt's hand down on the boy's feverishly panting chest, and sits back, silent.

"Walt?" She is close to him, speaking to him in a soft but firm tone. With it, Heather opens her mind to him, gently as she can. He seems to try to form words, but she tells him (internally) not to. "Relax. Do you see the torch?" There is a pause, no real reaction from him, at least not to the others—they don't hear what she does. "Good. Focus on that for me, okay? You don't have to think about anything, all you have to do is keep that torch burning, all right?" Another pause. "All right." Heather takes a deep breath, and using the hunting knife still at her hip, cuts away the boys shirt, where underneath is a gnarled mass of flesh—Michael whimpers and she hears Sawyer grunt, looking away.

"Jack, you must give Walt water, only a little at a time, but about every forty or so minutes. It'll help."

Sitting back for a moment, Heather turns her head, looking directly at Sawyer. "You… you need to leave." His mouth opens in protest, but she looks down to the ground and though he stiffens, he takes it as well as possible, and goes beyond the screen. Locke, as if knowing when to take his cue, exits as well.

Heather turns to Jack, taking her last full breath, riding the calm before the storm. "No matter what, do not move me or stop me, or let anyone else." It's clear by her tone that this is the true reason she sent Sawyer out. And Jack is grimacing, wondering what they're getting into. "Don't stop me. Promise me Jack."

"I promise." His voice is dry and emotional. She blinks hard a few times, but does not cry, goes back to Walt.

"Walt, you need to work with me. It's going to be a little bit scary, but I'm always here Walt. You know what I said about card tricks? That a magician never reveals his secrets? Forget that. Nothing can be a secret Walt."

_Open,_ She tells him privately, followed by a flash of emotions and pictures, the taste of sweetness and the feel of warm sunshine, small pleasantries that can't begin to cover the invasiveness of what she's about to do. _Open, sweetheart._

He does.

She does not lay her hands directly unto his mangled flesh, but above it. Her eyes roll whites and then close behind their lids. Darkness folds over them both, and immediately Jack knows that this is something far removed from his expertise.


	10. Simple Questions

"And what would you intend to find?  
(Solitude? Your peace of mind?)  
Holding out for something less than touching the hand of God?"  
Better Than Ezra

**Chapter Nine**

There is no such thing as time. There is only pain—all kinds of pain at first, spiraling in the blackness between dreams and hopes and thoughts. Then there is Walt's consciousness, groggy, but (perhaps his father would be proud) not all too frightened or shaken. Heather holds it, and at first Walt resists, tries to pull back. After all, merging consciousnesses is not a fun or easy thing to do.

But he does not resist long, and then, suddenly, she can see his whole life—both the things that he remembers, and the things he doesn't, everything open to her and overwhelming. _Not why you're here,_ She thinks, and he hears it as well. With that, she opens in turn—feels Walt's young mind (which is old beyond his years) pour through her, knowing her darkest moments and her greatest triumphs. The nakedness of it is embarrassing, uncomfortable, but necessary.

The connection now runs between them, and she focuses on the life force pumping through her veins—not blood itself, but what blood carries. She pictures it from her solar plexus, a small sun that burns brightly.

_Remember Walt, you have to keep your own fire going._

_But its dying,_ He replies, and then with a chilling, nearly indifferent disappointment: _I'm dying._

_That's why I'm lending you some of mine. Just don't lose that fire._

With that, Heather gives the first real push, sending out that life force—it's hard at first, but then she can feel Walt taking it, drawing it from her, his spirit involuntarily doing what it knows it must to survive, whether that means being a leech or a vampire. A small, squeezed noise presses from Heather's mouth and Jack holds his breath—it is the last noise that she makes for the next seven hours.

Jack watches intently for the two hours, not moving from his spot other than to pour several capfuls of water into Walt's mouth every so often—and when he rubs his eyes (night has fallen over the island, and the doctor, though he claims not to need sleep, has a body that disagrees) and looks again at Walt's stomach, what he sees causes him to stand up sharply. The wound has pretty much completely healed on the outside—however, there is a strange swelling that suggests something is still going on underneath. However, the fact that new skin has grown so quickly, so efficiently, is amazing—there is no scar that he can readily see, but even in the dim lighting he can tell that the skin there is lighter than the rest of Walt's skin.

Michael does not bother to look up from Walt, his expression unchanging.

"Pssst," Jack hears Sawyer's voice from around the screen. "Hey Doc?" It's a whisper, barely that, but definitely there. Jack takes a look at Heather and Walt, who have not changed positions in over two hours, and decides he can leave them for a moment. Directly after coming from behind the screen, Sawyer is sitting, back against the cave wall—seeing Jack, he stands. "Hey. What's going on?"

"It's the strangest thing I've ever seen, even after coming to this island. I think she can actually save him… even make him the way he was before the boar."

"How does she look?" Jack stops, thinks for a moment. He had been focusing on Walt, not Heather, and now he realizes that he didn't really know how she looked.

"Tired. Neither of them have moved the entire time."

Sawyer nods, and Jack acts on impulse, puts his hand on his shoulder. Sawyer manages to work up his cocky smile, despite the circumstances.

"You got something to tell me there, Doc?" Jack laughs, nervous but almost appreciating Sawyer's humor in the face of all of this, and takes his hand away.

"Do you need anything?" Jack asks, more serious than before. "I suppose I can't convince you to sleep."

"Nah. Pack of smokes would be good, but I think I'll sit this one out right here."

Jack nods, and with nothing else to say (though he imagines that his opinion of Sawyer is changing again) goes back to Heather and Walt, who have not moved.

- - -

_Why don't you two just love each other?_ Walt asks her, and Heather mentally jumps at the sound of his voice so close to her—his strength is returning, but hers is ebbing.

_What?_ She asks, but their communication is without words—Walt sends her images from both his memory and those he found in hers, of Sawyer and her, and she inwardly sighs. _It's not that easy Walt._

There is Silence, and then her sends her memories of his mother, of meeting his father for the first time. _I know,_ he responds.

Time is indeterminate for her and Walt, can be judged only by how much more exhausted she feels, and that the pain is passing from him. Suddenly, it becomes harder for her to give her energy (much like the invisible 'wall' that marathon runners can hit out of nowhere), and her attention quickly goes to that small sun in her chest, worried. Walt's consciousness follows without effort.

_What's happening?_ He asks, but he can feel the power there dwindling as well as she can. His fire is growing stronger at the expense of her own; hers is not sputtering yet, but it is much dimmer than the beginning.

_Just getting tired,_ She responds, redoubling the amount of energy she is pushing into him. He tries to stop her, but she is forcing herself on him, a backwards parasite.

_You need to stop!_

_Walt, I'll be okay. It's easier if you cooperate with me._ At this Walt quiets, lets her resume her work. However, he is uneasy, understands that Heather might not stop even at the cost of selling her soul to him—he tries to hide this thought from her, and she can feel him pull back. She does not follow.


	11. Promises, Promises

"She don't have a flame, she'd prefer to burn out like a torch."  
Something Corporate

**Chapter Ten**

It is the dead of night, the early hours of morning. Jack assumes that the sun will be rising with the next couple of hours, and his worry has grown into an acute sense of anxiety and restlessness. Heather looks much paler now, and her posture is more slumped—sweat has broken on her brow, and she looks very sick. Continuously reminding himself of his promise, he tries to watch Walt instead. The swelling in Walt's stomach has receded remarkably, and his breathing is coming more and more easily—his eyes appear more alert, though they do not leave the flame.

More time passes, and Jack can hear Sawyer shuffle outside of the screen, still awake. He decides that after this next round of giving Walt water, he'll go talk to Sawyer again, because he feels guilty otherwise. The sky is at its darkest point, preparing for dawn. When he goes to Walt, he can see that Heather is soaked in sweat, and her hands are shaking badly—fear is driven like a spike into his chest, a gasp caught in his throat. Michael just looks onward, blank. Jack has offered him water, food, and narcotics, but Michael does not acknowledge his presence.

Jack recalls his promise, has no idea what he's supposed to do. If he draws Heather back, not only does that break his promise, but Walt could not be finished and die. For all he knows, Heather could be mentally damaged if torn away. _But she'll kill herself anyway, won't she? Isn't that what's she's doing, more or less?_ He tries to push those thoughts away, tries to reassure himself that she must know what she's doing. After all, how else could she?

He raises a capful of water to Walt's lips.

"Sawyer," The boy whispers, and Jack spills the water in surprise.

"Walt?" Both grown men say at once. Jack leans closer, and Michael does too—the voice of his son breaking whatever spell had come over him. Michael slides to his knees, but is careful not to bump Heather.

"Jack-" Walt whispers, and Jack leans forward, his ear almost directly against the boys mouth. "Can't talk much. She'll hear." Shivers run down Jack's spine—why is Walt trying to hide something from Heather? What's going on? "Get Sawyer." The boy never looks away from the fire, but seems to be concentrating very hard. "Hurry!" He urges, and Jack immediately stands, leaving Michael to run his hands over the boys face, murmuring to him, eyes wide with hope.

"We need you," Jack tells Sawyer, as soon as he steps out from behind the screen. Sawyer's brow furrows, but he wastes no time in standing and following. "Walt called for you. I think it's about her." Sawyer drops to the ground next to the boy, and whenever he moves down to listen to him, Michael starts as if to stop him. "Michael." Jack reprimands and the man obviously bites his tongue, sits back. It's clear that he understands the necessity of not disturbing Heather, and he more than anyone else is not going to compromise that.

Sawyer sees how badly she is shaking, sees the sweat matting her hair, how pale she has become—and sends a look of pure disgust and loathing at Jack, before moving his ear near to the boy's mouth.

"I can't talk long. She can't find out. If she isn't done by the time the sun rises, stop her. Even if…" And Walt, at ten years old, pauses, wanting them to understand what he's saying. That he knows the consequences. "Even if she isn't done. She'll kill herself. Sunrise."

Sawyer nods, though Walt is still staring at the torch. Sawyer stands, and then turns on Jack, with nothing short of murder in his eyes.

"So what was the plan? Just let her do… do whatever she's doing until she dies?" His voice is quiet, but there is nothing friendly or amiable in his voice, serious enough to forgo referring to Jack as 'doc'. Jack backs up, is startled by the ferocity he sees in Sawyer. Michael watches them, mostly afraid that if they fight they'll upset Heather, and that might hurt his boy.

"Sawyer, I wouldn't let that-" But Sawyer cuts him off, a very large fist gripping the collar of Jack's shirt and pulling him in close.

"You're right. Because if it _does_ happen, you're going to be the first one I come looking for." There is not doubt that this is a threat well-backed, and Jack is speechless for a moment, and realizes that he is staring down into killer's eyes. He doesn't know for a fact if Sawyer has ever killed anyone, but suddenly that doesn't seem impossible in the slightest.

"What- what did he say? What did Walt say?" Jack swallows hard, and Sawyer lets go of him, but doesn't move away at first.

"He said that if she doesn't stop by sunrise, then to stop her ourselves. He says that if we don't, she'll end up killing herself." Sawyer can see Jack thinking this over, and tilts his head in his familiar way, though there is nothing good-natured about it. "That's why she had me leave, isn't it? I sat out there for about six fucking hours because she's afraid I'll jump the gun, pull the plug, and she enlisted your help."

"She… made me promise that I wouldn't stop her, no matter what." Jack blinks, wants to look away from Sawyer's glare, but doesn't, forces himself to meet it. "And she made me promise that I would stop anyone that tries to stop her."

"You going to keep that promise come sunrise, _Doc_?" And now the old nickname comes back, but it's filled with venom and edged with razors. Sawyer's voice is barely more than a growl.

"No. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll help you stop her."

"That's the right answer."

- - -

Sawyer does not move from Heather's side, and grows increasingly agitated, shifting back and forth, as he watches Heather's shaking get worse. Now her whole body seems to be shivering, not just her hands. At the first sign of day break he is ready to pull her away, and hopes that that's what is needed. Jack leaves for a few moments, and returns with a bottle of prescription drugs.

At Sawyer's questioning glance, he says, "Valium. In case."

Sawyer swallows, sets his jaw, waits.


	12. The Break

"Oh, life is waiting for you: it's all messed up but we'll survive."  
Our Lady Peace

** Chapter 11**

_Heather!_ Walt is screaming in his head, and though his voice is thundering, strong, certainly strong enough to survive, Heather can barely hear him. She is growing distant, can't react to his pleas. _Stop it! Stop! Let me go! I'm fine now, you have to let me go! _ But when he tries to pull away, she has a grip like a vice around him, pouring more and more of herself into him. Her star, her sun, has dwindled down until it is only a pinprick against a gray darkness.

Finally, knowing that it will hurt her (but save her life in the same instance) he throws all his power into resisting, into struggling—and he is so much stronger now, using her own energy against her. Heather can barely fight him, but she doesn't have to—there's only a little bit left to give, and Walt is not only fighting her, but himself—a soul receiving that kind of power instinctually latches on until it sucks its source dry.

However, the internal struggle does not go unnoticed to watching eyes. Walt's body jerks, and his breath comes ragged—breathy whispers rise from behind a tight clenched jaw: "Stop! Don't hurt yourself!"

And then the objects around them are warming, strange and unreal in the almost-morning light. _The same kind of light yesterday morning, the light I shared with her,_ Sawyer thinks, and maybe a bit roughly, ceases Heather. His arms close around her chest, hauling her up and away from Walt without hesitation. The boy cries out at if something has been pulled from him, and Sawyer can swear that he's close enough to feel a sort of 'tearing' between them, and knows that this is why he was told to wait. Heather was supposed to close that link herself.

But she didn't.

She was going to kill herself before she admitted that she could let go.

Michael brings Walt to his chest, and the boy is shaking, but his reaction is nowhere near as strong as Heather's. The woman is convulsing, and gasping for air. Jack is immediately over, and tugs off his shirt, folding a bit of it.

"Open her mouth! She's going to bite her tongue off!" Sawyer does his best, and Jack shoves a bit of the T-shirt in, just before Heather's jaw clamps down hard, certainly hard enough to sever anything in the way. "Hold her tight, don't let her hurt herself!" With his arms locked around her body, Sawyer tries to cradle her against him, between his legs. He suffers a few writhing hits to the crotch with a stoic gruffness, pulling her tighter.

Jack crushes one and a half of the Valiums as best he can, knowing that he'll never get her to swallow them without choking, adding the pieces to a bit of water.

"I need you to tilt her head back." Sawyer complies, and then tries pry a bit of her mouth open, as Jack pours the water down. He ends up with bloody fingers for his effort, and Heather coughs heavily to the point where he thinks she might be choking, but swallows most of it.

Within the next few minutes her convulsions have dulled to shaking, and then her muscles relax further. There is no point where she appears to be 'seeing' anything, though her eyes are open all the while. With a few more gasping shudders, she passes out of consciousness. Sawyer looks up to Jack, and Jack has never seen him so completely vulnerable—it's a humbling sight.

"Is she going to be okay?"

"I don't know," Jack answers. "But the Valium stopped her convulsions, and that was the most immediate concern. She needs to rest." Sawyer nods, and then with her in his arms, stands. "I don't know if you should be lifting her-"

"I can't leave her here for everyone to look at." When Sawyer says this, there's something also whimper-like in it. Jack sighs.

"Lay her down further back in the caves—if there are no backpacks and blankets around, then that's probably a good spot. I'll come to you in a few minutes, I need to check on Walt." Sawyer leaves, and when Jack turns to Walt, the boy has been swept into his father's arms. Michael is shouting for joy, and Jack can hear the others outside of the screen being woken. Jack knows that he needs to hurry, before there is a crowd, and take a look at Walt. "Michael, let me see him."

Michael is reluctant, but puts Walt down. The boy has little trouble standing on his own, his bare chest and belly unmarred expect for the lighter patch of skin over his stomach.

"I tried to stop her. I'm sorry-" When he speaks, it is with the energy of a child, and there is no pain or weariness to it.

"It's not your fault. Walt, are you okay? How do you feel?"

"I feel okay, I don't hurt anywhere. I can still feel her though, it's like part of me is still attached to her." Jack bites at his lower lip, and his voice is quieter when he asks the next question.

"Can you tell me how she is? What happened?"

"She's… gone away right now. Someplace dark. I kept telling her to stop, but she wouldn't." Tears stand in Walt's eyes, and Jack sighs, looks at the ground.

"It's not your fault. You're safe, and that's what she wanted." Jack begins to stand, not only to go back to Heather, but also to tell the others not to tax either Walt or her. Getting another shirt is also a priority. However, Walt takes hold of his wrist, pulls him back.

"She needs Sawyer right now. She needs someone to protect her," Walt's tone is urgent, and Jack is unsettled by the acuteness of the fear and knowing in the boy's eyes. "She didn't close herself properly, and… and bad things might feel that. At least until she's better."

"What kind of bad things Walt?"

But he shakes his head, and then there is a crowd around the screen, everyone piling in to take a look at the boy.


	13. Dreams of Rain

"You said to me,  
'Son, one day you'll be a man--and men can do terrible things.'  
Yes they can."  
Something Corporate

**Chapter Twelve**

Later, Walt's father is dozing—he has been awake and racked with fear all night, and though he is sitting relatively upright, his head has nodded down to his chest. Walt has been inspected to everyone's liking, and given a new shirt. Though people still come to ask him how he is, and what happened, the excitement around it has died down a bit, as people realize he's not there simply to entertain their curiosity. The boy gets up from his father's side, and walks deeper into the caves, looking for Heather.

He finds her and Sawyer, Sawyer propped up against the cave wall not much unlike his father, only Walt can tell that somehow Sawyer is still awake. Heather is asleep near him, and he has fashioned a cocoon of blankets around her—Walt can see that despite this, she seems to still be shivering. Sawyer looks up to the boy, resettles himself. His eyes are bloodshot, and Walt wonders if he's actually been crying, or if it's just from the stress and not sleeping.

"Hey kiddo."

"Hi."

"You checking up on her?" Walt didn't know what to expect, but general kindness wasn't it. He mostly expected Sawyer to blame him, and had been prepared for that. Walt nods, comes over to Sawyer and Heather. "Yeah, maybe you can tell me something about what happened then. Though I'm sure they've nearly beat it out of you by now, right?" Walt shrugs, sits down. He's still watching Sawyer warily, ready for the grown man to lash out at him.

"I'm sorry," Walt says looking at the ground.

"Well kid, then that makes two of us, dunit?" Walt doesn't respond directly, and then Sawyer sighs, pushes his hair out of his face. "What did you see? Is there anything I can do?"

"She feels like it was her fault, what happened between you two." Walt looks away, but Sawyer is watching him closely.

"You know about that, then."

"I know about a lot more than that," Walt replies. "It was like sharing lives."

"Feel like giving me any pointers then?" Walt is silent, and Sawyer whistles low through his teeth. "Yeah, it's personal. I understand." But Walt it walking on his knees closer to Heather, leaning down. He puts his ear to her temple, face twisted in concentration. "What is it-"

"Shh!"

"Well okay then."

Walt closes his eyes, and Sawyer shifts restlessly. Whatever the kid hears, he sure as hell doesn't, and that makes him uneasy. He opens his mouth to ask Walt what he sees, or hears, whatever he's doing, but Walt beats him too it.

"She's looking for someone," He says, seems to be listening very hard.

"Who?" Sawyer leans forward, as if maybe by getting closer he'll hear it too.

"Shh!" The man grits his molars together, rolls his eyes, but doesn't say anything else. The boy's lips are forming words, but he isn't speaking. Sawyer, not afraid of much of anything, is finding himself unsettled, disturbed by the sight. "She's looking for someone named James."

Sawyer, in spite of himself, physically reacts to this news, jerking backwards. Fortunately, Walt is too absorbed in what he's doing, and doesn't notice.

"Can she see him-"

"No. It's really dark, and it's raining everywhere." Sawyer watches as Walt shivers, as if caught out in the rain himself. "It's not that cold though. Just raining. And dark." The boy is wincing, and Sawyer imagines that it's because of how loud Heather might be in his head. Then without warning, Walt jumps backwards, eyes round as quarters in terror, inhaling in a sharp gasp. Sawyer jumps as well in shock. The boy is lying on the cave ground, breathing hard—Sawyer takes his shoulders, sits him up right.

"What is it? What did you see? What was it?" Walt's shoulders, small in Sawyer's hands, are shaking violently. Sawyer in his anticipation fights the urge to shake him further and knock an answer out of him.

"A man shot himself. In the head." There is a deadly recognition in the boy's eyes as he looks up the grown man. "He looked a lot like you."

There is a pause, and Sawyer's eyes are wide, watching the boy with a certain brutal intensity.

"It wasn't you though, was it?" Walt's glaring at him in a half-accusatory way, the other half curious, suspicious.

"Well that's obvious now ain't it?" Sawyer spits, meaner than he wanted it to be. "Do you know if she's going to be okay?" Walt looks at the ground, shrugs, and Sawyer's hands suddenly clutch the boy's shoulders, and he's fighting not to shake the little runt with all the strength in his body. "_Is she going to be okay?_"

"I don't know!" Walt shouts, and the sound echoes down the caves. Sawyer checks over each shoulder, lets go of him as Michael walks over. There is a moment where the father and Sawyer eye each other, but they're both in very different positions—for Michael, Walt is already saved. For Sawyer, the case is somewhat more complicated. As if knowing this, Michael does not start anything.

Sawyer hangs his head, slides back against the cave wall, and tries not to think about what the boy said.


	14. Quiet Conversations

"Is it safe to be a man, when you're tired and lonely?  
Only the confident know where to stand."  
Our Lady Peace

**Chapter Thirteen**

Nighttime comes over the island, and Sawyer has barely moved from his spot, only rising to get Jack when he thought Heather may have been breathing funny, or to get more water (mostly for Heather, patting her skin with a damp cloth). He does not accept any food, and though the fight was valiant, is finally loosing the battle against sleep. Jack tries to convince him on two occasions to take sleeping pills and relax, because Heather will need him, and he could make himself sick if he doesn't take care of himself. Sawyer responds with something along the likes of calling Jack a hypocrite, but in a considerably more hostile manner.

Jack does not tell Sawyer what Walt told him: that she'll need protection. That certain things on the island might be able to see her, and he imagines a beacon lit in darkness, drawing all sorts of nightmares to it. Though he knows that Sawyer would be upset (an understatement) to know that this was hidden from him, Jack doesn't want to worry the man—and for that matter, he's halfway trying to chalk up whatever Walt said as nothing but an overactive imagination. Which he supposes might be pointless after what Heather did anyway.

However though, there is a point where sleep washes over him, claims him completely. Head to his chest, Sawyer's arms are crossed, and next to him lies Heather.

She stirs, and in darkness, her eyes blink open. Her first thought is not that it is nighttime, but that perhaps she is caught in the space between worlds; a terrifying moment of horror strikes her, but passes when she hears Sawyer breathing close by. As her eyes adjust to the dim lighting, she understands that she is in the caves.

Within the same instant, her spirit cries out for Walt, its adopted child.

The connection was severed without much warning, that much is clear to her. Heather is briefly infuriated at this, but that passes—being angry takes too much energy, and to find Sawyer posted like a guard by her side tramples out that anger. Besides, there is a deep, aching pain throughout her body, particularly in her gut and along her spine. _Feels like the goddamn flu,_ She thinks, and knows that she'll have a fever sometime soon, that her body has only been delaying the reaction as long as it could, with more of a hope for her survival that way.

Sitting up, she has to worm her way out from under a decent number of blankets, and though she knows that it is likely in the ballpark of 95 degrees (not to mention the humidity) during the day, she is cold, shivers. Heather stands, looking down at Sawyer with a pang of something that is both guilt and gratuity and possibly love.

_What did Walt ask? Why we can't just love each other?_

Thinking of Walt, and being on her feet, clears her head a bit. She wobbles for the first couple of steps, and understands that the ache and burn throughout her body is going to get worse before it gets any better. However, this is only more of an incentive to use the time she has.

Stumbling (though luckily she never falls completely, as she isn't sure of her capability for getting back up) Heather makes her way through the cave in search of Walt. Despite the low light, and that most of the sleeping persons look the same (like dark bundles of clothes), she has an inward guidance pulling her along, something she thinks may not fade—especially since the bond between them had not been properly closed.

He wakes before she even really spots him, probably drawn by that same force, comes to her with a blanket he had been using as a pillow. Before saying a word, Walt hands this to her, and she imagines that were he tall enough, he'd help wrap her in it. Hand in hand they walk out of the caves, and each takes a seat with their backs against a rock outcropping, with the embers of the night's fire smoldering not far off.

"How are you?" Heather asks. Her mouth and throat are dry, making it painful to speak. Walt takes her hand again, and answers. He uses the touch though, and doesn't have to speak aloud. The words he sends her are accompanied by an emotion of gratitude.

_Good, and thank you. I never got to thank you right._

_Don't mention it, kiddo._

_That's what Sawyer called me. Kiddo._

_Must have heard it from him while I was sleeping._

_How are you? I… I could see part of your dreams, and they were_- A flush of images and words at once: darkness, rain, fright, coldness. Then: _Who's James?_

_I'll be all right, long as there aren't any more heroics._ Then, thinking over her memories (and Walt is not right there with her like he was during when she healed him, but he can still see bits and pieces flash by), she replies: _James? I don't know._

_Maybe you got that from him too,_ Walt whispers, but of course there is no way to whisper in someone's mind, and she hears it clearly. A sort of collage comes with it, made of various pictures of Sawyer from Walt's memory. Heather, sensing that those are deep waters and that she is in no condition at the moment for swimming, does not question him further.

They communicate in this way for quite some time, to where the dawn of another day begins to show rose-like in the sky. At some point they drop words all together, and communicate only by shared memories, emotions, images.

A few minutes after the sun has risen fully, there is a cry from within the caves—and the trance between the two is broken, and losing touch of each other, their heads turn and watch.

"Jack, Heather's gone!" She can hear panic in Sawyer's voice, and wonders why it would be so surprising. In the background there is the sound of Michael calling for his son as well. Before she can respond to them, Sawyer is running out of the caves, Jack jogging behind. Shouting something at Jack over his shoulder, he manages to run almost past Walt and Heather without noticing.

"Hey cowboy, where's the fire?" Heather calls as loud as her voice will also, which is still only a dry rasp. Sawyer spins on the heels of his shoes, turning to her. There seems to be a flicker of hesitation in his eyes, but then he goes to her, drops to his knees and pulls her to him. _Why?_ Heather thinks, immediately suspicious. _To seal something he started? To prove something to Jack? To prove something to himself?_

"I'm sorry," He murmurs into her ear, and she forgets the analysis. The scratch of his cheek against hers, his strong arms around her, and the powerful beat of his heart are enough she needs for the moment. She lets this be enough to fill her, for the moment. Sawyer has a rough, but very real energy to him (unlike Locke's, whose is hidden, or Jack's, whose is intense but much more introverted), and her body craves that for itself, wants to bask in the light of it. Jack gives them a moment before hunching down himself.

"I'm going to have a fever, if I don't already," Heather says to him as he checks her pulse and her breathing. "My entire body is sore. Almost like…" She thinks for a moment, and Jack goes about his business quietly. "Like I gave way too much blood. But it wasn't blood. But you know that."

"What you need to do is rest," He replies, and then feeling her forehead with the back of his hand, winces. "I wouldn't try any mercury-based thermometer on you even if I had one because it's too dangerous after the crash, but you're burning up. I'm going to start you on an antibiotic-"

"No. Just Tylenol, if it does you."

"Heather, you could have a serious-" She reaches out, takes his hand. His watches her wearily, thinking of how she forced her past into his head the last time she touched him, and Sawyer bristles, though trying not to show it.

"And trust me, no amount of antibiotics will save me if it is serious. I'll only end up using them in place of someone who might need them in the future. A couple of Tylenol will break the fever just fine."

"You sure?" Sawyer eyes her sideways, but says nothing.

"Yeah." With this, Jack nods, backs away, and Sawyer walks her back to their small section of the cave. Those that are awake in the early morning stare at them unabashedly, making no effort to mask their blatant stares.

"Do you need anything?" Sawyer asks her as she lies down for the second time: she's exhausted just by the morning excursion.

"Not unless you're hiding away a rescue boat."

Sawyer smiles, "You don't think I'd share?"

"I think you'd probably trade it for a pack of batteries, a flashlight, and…" Heather gives him a mock measuring glance, and winks. "A steak." At this he manages a low, quiet laugh behind the smile, shakes the hair out of his eyes.

"Rare and with some potatoes? You wouldn't have to worry about no flashlights." He stays with her as she falls asleep, and though she does look feverish and has chills from time to time, Sawyer is contented for the moment. It is perhaps not the best he has felt (it's not the rush after sealing a particularly lucrative deal) but it's an easy feeling, and he hasn't felt truly easy in…

_A damn long time,_ He answers himself, settling into his regular spot by her. However, he stops his thoughts from drifting further into the past, as he thinks that it might somehow upset her.

After taking a light cat-nap (which, due to exhaustion and stress, was perhaps a little more than a cat-nap), Sawyer wakes to the feeling of being watched. It is dim in the caves, but he can tell that it's around midday outside, and the boy Walt is sitting down not far away, watching them both. Sawyer finds this eerie, but tries to play it off as annoyance. "What you doin' kid?"

Walt looks up, and offers a small smile.

"I wanted to help," He explains, and goes back to watching on his own, seemingly carefree.

"Help with what?" Sawyer tone is more irritated now, not necessarily out of actual anger but more habit.

"Keeping her safe." This time when Walt's eyes meet Sawyer's, Sawyer sees him for a bit of what he truly is: not just a boy, but something deeper. It's the same thing he saw in Heather at times, especially when they shared their silence, but Walt's is different—closer to his surface.

"That's what I'm here for kid," Sawyer's voice is gruff, but the bite has gone out of it. Now that the initial surprise of finding himself being watched (while he was asleep and completely unaware for it) had worn of, he was feeling that exhaustion, particularly weighing on his eyes. Hearing this, Walt shrugs, is drawing something in the dirt, but without any real enthusiasm. "Besides, it's the middle of the day, and we're in the caves—Jack says they're the safest place on the island." _That we know of, anyway,_ he adds to himself. Walt casts a more meaningful glance at Heather's sleeping figure, and then after a moment, shrugs again.

"God dammit kid, can you stop doing that?"

"Sure." To his credit, Walt does not shrug an answer, though Sawyer has the distinct impression that he is sorely tempted to, and sees a brief flicker of a smile on the boy's lips, as if considering it. They sit in silence for a while longer, and Sawyer, though his body calls out for sleep, aching from the sitting in the same position, can not give in to it with that kid sitting around watching them. Is there something he doesn't know? Maybe the kid thinks something, someone, is actually going to try something in the middle of the day, around all these people?

That kind of thinking didn't make for sweet dreams.

Finally, compelled by curiosity, boredom, and the need to stay awake, he nods to Walt, who looks over. "Say boy, can you do that trick again?" When he doesn't reply, Sawyer continues. "Where you tell me what she's dreaming."

The boy's jaw immediately clenches, and he scolds Sawyer with a sharp look. Sawyer, though he knows it's stupid to feel chastised by a kid, finds himself stumbling to try to justify it.

"I'm just saying, what if-"

"You wouldn't like it if I did it to you," Walt cuts him off, unnaturally coldly—he must feel that he crossed a definite line with his last attempt. Again, there is a deepness to him, something that Sawyer can't place. For one frantic moment he wonders if Walt somehow knows about _him_, but that passes. _It's kids logic, ain't it? That's what they say when you step on a spider._ But altogether, the remark did hold its own: no, most certainly not, would Sawyer like it if someone peeked into his thoughts when he wasn't looking.

However, the smart-ass part of him can't let the matter be, feels the need to defend himself. "Well you know, it ain't like this is a normal situation, is it? She's damn near burning up, and it'd be nice to know if I had to go get the Doc or somethin'." Giving Walt a hard glare, he sees the boy's resolution waver. After all, Walt is still just a kid, and kids always have such a hard time not listening to adults.

"Okay," Walt cedes, standing and brushing the dirt from his pants. He goes over to Heather, and giving Sawyer a look that makes the man feel like he's looking into a (young, black) mirror, lowers his head as if to listen to the woman's thoughts. He concentrates hard, and Sawyer feigns (not very successfully) a cool, mild interest.

"She's dreaming about you-" And then Walt's face goes blank, and his jaw hangs open—Sawyer immediately sits forward, tense. _SHE KNOWS!_ His mind screams, over and over. However, before Sawyer has time to realize that he has interpreted the sudden pause for something that it certainly isn't, the boy flushes, and stands up straight. "Sorry, he told me to!" He breathes quickly, and then sprints off away from the two of them. Sawyer, now less frightened than perplexed, looks down to Heather, trying to figure out what has just happened.

"Dreams are private things, mister." Heather opens one eye, and even though her face is beaded with a feverish dampness, he can see her smiling at him in a jaunty, cocky way. "Had him checking up on me, huh?" Her tone is relaxed, amused even and-

And suddenly Sawyer feels incredibly stupid.

"Oh," He says. Which doesn't exactly make him feel any smarter. Feeling sheepish, and even more awkward because of that, Sawyer runs a hand through his hair.

"That a blush, cowboy?" Her voice is low, hoarse, but definitely good-natured. "Didn't know you had it in you."

"Go back to sleep," He manages thickly, with a bit of a crooked smile. She laughs, but he sees that it hurts her to do so, and she closes her eyes again, sleep quickly reclaiming her.

"My God, you're a dumbass," Sawyer whispers to himself, and chuckles. Soon enough he has moved from being propped up against the cave wall, to laying nearby Heather, stretched out with his hands behind his head. In spite of himself, he can't wipe the stupid, cheesy smile from his face.

This time his sleep is without interruptions.


	15. Back to the Beach

"So let's go before I change my mind, leave the luggage of all your lives behind."  
Ani Difranco

**Chapter Fourteen**

By the second day, Heather is moving around on her own, and seems to have returned from that twilight point in-between health and sickness. Many pat her on the back, thank her, tell her she's a saint (and she can see a mixture of doubt and hope in their eyes). However, many more seem intent on avoiding her, look away quickly if she happens to catch them staring at her. What she can feel from them is fear, and it hurts. _But you knew that that would happen. You knew it, but you didn't have a choice._

She can barely get a moment of peace where Sawyer isn't following along on her heels, and if she's getting strange looks from the rest of the survivors, then he's getting more. At one point Heather saw Kate walk up to Sawyer, and by reading their body language, could tell that she was trying to make some sort of amends, assure some of whatever kind of friendship they had. Though she approached him in a casual manner, wearing a smile that was easy enough, Sawyer must have said something harsh to her, because it wasn't long before she left him again, walking away stiff-legged and with pursed lips.

_And you know why he's doing it too,_ Heather had thought, and the guilt bogged her down worse than the physical and emotional strain already on her body. _Because he's trying to send a message—to Kate, to me, to himself._ The best she can hope for is that after things have settled again, it will be better for them. Of course, there is some sort of deep-rooted suspicion of their relationship inside of her, but Heather has no willpower to jock with Kate, least of all for Sawyer, who (outwardly, at the least) would enjoy that all too much.

At one point she had tried her best to wander off without being noticed, and when she had been ready to drop her pants with some form of dignity, saw Sawyer come tramping through the bushes. They had had a brief shouting match (in which she triumphed), and a moody and somewhat humiliated Sawyer was sent back towards the caves, more than one person snickering as he passed.

Sawyer has relinquished some of that hold over her, now that she can move fairly well (though still with plenty of aches and pains). Heather can see that it is torture for him to be away from the beach, and knows that when she takes naps (which were at first very long, but have become shorter as she's inwardly healed) he is checking up on his things.

Jack is giving her a daily check-up, shining a pen light in her eyes, monitoring her pulse. She knows that he's really just going through the motions—after all, he doesn't understand the damnedest bit about what occurred between her and Walt.

"I think… I think I'm going to be moving back down to the beach soon." When she proposes this, Jack stops what he is doing, looks at her questioningly. He is hunched down in front of her, and Sawyer is somewhere in the distance, out of earshot if she keeps her voice low. "It's killing him to stay here. He hates everyone watching him."

"Really? I kind of thought Sawyer was one for attention." Jack is trying to make light of it, and she can appreciate the effort. From what she's heard (and she's heard plenty) the man was quite the terror before she showed up. It also came to her through a backwards grapevine that Sawyer and Kate had shared a… heated moment.

Another reason why he couldn't stay here, with that following him around. Why she felt like shit for forcing him to.

"You know what I mean." Heather sighs, not in the mood for the word games and the jokes. "All he can hear is the whispers about him. Some people saying that he's really just a good guy deep down like they know him-"

"-Which I'm sure is just so terrible for him-"

"-and the people saying that he's just sticking with me for my… ability. Or that he thinks that by protecting me, he's redeeming himself. Raising his status." She watches Jack's eyes carefully, and decides, without a shadow of a doubt, that she likes him: likes him down to his core. The woman feels a pang of guilt, knowing that that same ability made his job harder, perhaps less credible—both as a doctor, and a leader.

"Heather-" His voice is lowered, and he leans forward. They both know that she won't like what he's about to say, but he's still a good man. The closest anyone else comes to fitting that description, as far as she knows, is Sayid—but he is not the type of person for one to sit down and talk with, but rather more reserved and dignified. "Heather, are you sure that that's _not_ what this is about? I mean, it's pretty convincing to me, but Sawyer's-"

"I know." She looks away, and Jack takes both of her hands in his, brings her eyes back to his. "I know. But it's not. He was here when we came back carrying Walt, and from the look on his face, he was here to apologize." Heather focuses past Jack, unto Sawyer's figure in the distance, as the tall man actually seems to crack a smile at something. "Jack, everything I tell you is between us, right? Probably Walt too, by default, but children are the best secret keepers."

"Of course."

"You're a good man. I'm sure you've heard this and everything, but you're a good leader too. Sawyer…" She pauses for a moment, thought-gathering. "Sawyer wants to be a good man." At the look on Jack's face, though it is only for the briefest second, Heather stops, gives him a sharp glance. "Hey, I know what I sound like. I might as well be getting beaten in the back of a trailer by a drunk, right? Some kind of abused victim complex?"

"Whoa, hey, no one ever said-"

"Forget it." Heather stands, feeling a temper flare for anger at herself, for spiritual exhaustion, for the need to defend Sawyer when she isn't even entirely positive that she _isn't_ talking out of her ass.

"Hey now-" And then she can hear his thoughts in her head, as loud as if he were speaking them into her ear. _Christ, she's acting just like him._ Heather whirls fast, jaw set hard.

"If Sawyer wants to be seen as some valiant hero at my side, then why isn't he strutting, Jack? Why does he watch people with that longing, and that loathing? He's staying for me, for whatever he thinks he can do for himself by doing for me."

"It's safer here." He knows that this is his last line of defense, and he also knows that is isn't going to stop her. "For you both."

"No where on this island is safe, Jack. Don't make that mistake." As she's walking away, she thinks about how quickly she let herself swing from amiable to vindictive: but she can't really blame herself, as she's been pushed to the edge of her limits, and dealing with skepticism has never been her specialty. _He's a good man,_ she thinks. _He deserves to have me and Sawyer out of his hair._

_- - - _

Later that day, Jack sits down outside of the caves, checking up on Walt—the boy still has that strange pale-mark on his stomach, but other than that, seems to be as healthy as ever. As Walt gets up to leave, Kate takes his place.

"You holding down the ship?" She asks with a concerned smile.

"Yeah, best I can at least."

"It's amazing, what Heather did to Walt. How is she?"

"Getting better. She moves around easier, and she's gotten some of her… energy back." Jack's voice has a tweak of irritation in it, and Kate arches an eyebrow.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Jack looks around before answering. "I think Sawyer's rubbing off on her-"

"Speaking of which, Jack," A voice calls out behind him, and Jack and Kate turn to see Charlie gesturing back into the caves over his shoulder. "You might wanna check that out." Jack stands, looking concerned, and heads into the caves. A moment later, Charlie and Kate can hear him half-shouting.

"Definitely not!" He ushers a rather guilty looking Sawyer (guiltier than usual, even) out with a stern grip on the man's upper arm, and his other hand is on Heather's lower back, doing the same. Both are fully clothed, though each looks rather ruffled, not to mention flushed.

Kate laughs into the heel of her hand, and looks away. Not so long afterwards Heather gives Walt a kiss goodbye (under the eyes of a suspicious but silent Michael) and her and Sawyer blow out of what he's come to call Cavetown, as if they're up and leaving the entire island.


	16. Do No Harm

"You see you'd love to run home, but you know you ain't got one   
Cause you're living in a world that you're best forgotten around here."   
Goo Goo Dolls

** Chapter Fifteen**

"I can't believe it," Boone says to Shannon, as they both watch Heather and Sawyer running back and forth along the beach, chasing each other in the blood orange light of a setting sun. "Who'd have thought that guy had a playful side, that didn't involve harassing someone else?" Sawyer takes a particularly quick turn, with a push, sends Heather careening on her backside into the water.

There is a shriek of laughter that carries even over the waves, and Sawyer quickly dodges back away from her, and Boone knows there has to be other people watching this—even from this distance he can see Sawyer actually _smiling_. Shannon doesn't respond, turns her nose up on the scene as Heather rushes at Sawyer and he simply opens his arms, catches her.

"Strange, don't you think?"

"I really don't think about them at all, thanks." Shannon's reply is as superior as ever and Boone sighs, sucks the inside of his teeth in irritation. They sit in silence for a moment, but when he starts to stand, she stops him with a hand on his arm. "Do you think… do you think she knows something about the island that we don't, Boone?" Boone is almost shocked by the depth of her question, looks back to the woman out over the beach, now that she and Sawyer are in embraced in a rather passionate kiss. He doesn't know the answer, but he knows what she did for Walt, and it's unsettling to think of.

"No." He finally answers, voice serious. Turning back to Shannon however, there is a grin on his face. "Because if she knew something about this island, then she'd already know that Sawyer's an asshole." Shannon doesn't look like she's going to laugh at this, but then she does crack a smile, leans her head into her step-brother's shoulder.

- - -

And for a while, things are good. Even when the rest of the island seems to be chaotic, things are good. Claire disappears, and Charlie watches Sawyer and Heather with such spite that they may as well have been the ones that dragged her off. Claire reappears not too long afterwards, and for all that Sawyer and Heather react, they've been too drawn into each other to care all so much. There are still games of tag and roughhousing on the beach, though they have seemed to settle more.

On one afternoon they are sitting outside of Sawyers tent, he's reading and so is she, though with markedly less interest than him. Suddenly her body goes cold, and the book she has been struggling to keep her eyes on falls into her lap. Sawyer looks up at her over his own book, brow furrowed at the blank, and then terrified look on her face.

"Somethin' wrong?"

"Yes." Heather answers, eyes wide. It feels like someone has dumped ice water over her body even though it can't be less than 90 degrees, even in the shade. She shivers, and Sawyer's concern deepens, he gets to his feet. "Someone's hurt." Sawyer doesn't like her little premonitions, partly because they're just plain creepy, and partly because he's afraid one day she'll guess about his past. They had died down for a while, though she and Walt could still communicate in complex, non-verbal ways (and she visited Walt everyday, without fail—rain or shine).

Heather looks up sharply, as if someone had called out.

A second later, Kate shouts: "Sawyer! Sawyer!" Then the other woman is there, and Heather gets to her feet (shaking). "I need your alcohol. Now!" Sawyer complies, but Heather can't move to help, feels rooted to her spot. Kate tells them that Boone was hurt while out with Locke, and this seems to break some of the spell on Heather, who turns to listen.

"Can I do anything?" Sawyer asks, following Kate a little ways.

"Too many cooks," Kate responds, but by the time Sawyer turns back, Heather is gone—tearing through the jungle towards the caves, though a different route than Kate (laden with bottles) is taking.

When Heather approaches the chaos at the caves, those 'on guard' outside of the familiar make-shift medical curtain take one look at her, and let her through. She feels like her bones have turned to ice, and her skin shivers heavy under a pelt of goose-bumps. Walt is nearby, in the back of her mind somewhere, and she closes off her thoughts to him (as best she can). Upon seeing Boone stretched out and covered in blood, Heather takes a step back, stifles a short gasp by clapping a hand to her mouth.

Jack and Sun look up at her at once, but what Heather is seeing is not cuts and scrapes. She is not speaking, but her mouth is forming a continuous line of words, as her eyes roll whites in her skull. Sun approaches her, hands outstretched in a careful gesture, but Heather falls back, crying out.

"What is it?" Jack shouts at her, eyes going frantically from her to Boone—he doesn't have time to play games. "WHAT IS IT?"

"Theresa falls up the stairs, Theresa falls down the stairs-" It's nothing but gibberish to Jack and Sun, but the frantic, hysterical pace to it is unsettling. There is something dangerous, crazed in her eyes, and Jack can quickly tell that there won't be any miracles from her tonight—the woman is still far too unstable from saving Walt, and she's not in her right mind.

"Someone! Michael! Get her out of here!" Michael appears from around the screen, and with Sun's help, lifts Heather (who is not struggling, but shivering almost violently enough to be convulsing, in a way that reminds Jack all too much of when they pulled her and Walt apart).

Outside, a blanket is wrapped around her and she is left by the fire. Feeling obligation to help her (probably simply because of what she did for his son) Michael watches over her. Walt comes alongside of him, instinctively goes to see if Heather is all right.

"Don't," Heather growls, and it's a tone that is so severe that Walt does stop in his traces—Michael sits up straighter, none too happy about this. "Don't let your boy touch me Michael. He doesn't need to see it."

"See what?" Regardless, upset, he pulls Walt too him, who is looking a cross between curiously defiant and hurt. Heather turns to look at him, and he can see that her eyes are bloodshot and swollen, even though they look dry enough.

"Keep him away from Locke." With that she rises, shrugs off the blanket, and picks her way (footing not quite sure) into the jungle. No one tries to stop her, though there are plenty of eyes on her. _Untouchable,_ she thinks. _Pariah._

As she leaves the fire behind, she dares the island to come to her, face to face.


	17. Beginnings

"And I wonder—is he different?  
Is he different?  
Has he changed what he's about?  
...Or is he just a liar with nothing to lie about?"  
Ani Difranco

**Chapter Sixteen**

"Is she here?" Sawyer asks, out of breath, as he comes upon Michael and Walt by the fire. He looks somewhat worried, but when Michael stands, spreading his hands in a classic 'I don't know' gesture, that worry etches deeper into his features. "Where's Heather?"

"I don't-" Michael starts, but Sawyer brushes past him, kneels down in front of Walt.

"Where is she?"

"She left. Which straight into the jungle," Walt says, and points to where Heather disappeared. Sawyer moves to stand and follow, but the boy stops him, grabs his arm. "Don't follow her."

"You think you're going to tell me what to do, kid?" Sawyer's height is intimidating, menacing—and Michael steps forward. Walt however, is stern, unmoved.

"She doesn't want anyone to follow her. She'll come back. She'll be okay." Walt stares straight back into Sawyer's intense glare, as if the say, 'Trust me, if I thought she was in danger, I'd be gone by now'. Sawyer, stubborn as ever, shrugs the boy's hand off, keeps walking. Walt, haughty, follows for a moment: "She has do to this herself! Haven't YOU ever had to do something alone!"

This, however, stops the grown man, who turns and gives Walt a long, scrutinizing glare. That's twice that the boy had used the 'if it were _you_' card on him, and Sawyer's frustrated that it's such an effective sort of logic.

"She'll be all right then?" He says, after a long moment, voice a thick growl. Walt nods, mimicking the same angry expression. _You wouldn't be able to find her in the dark anyway, not where she's going,_ Walt wants to say, but has a feeling that this would incite Sawyer, drive him into doing it, if only to prove him wrong. And right now, he has an obligation as Heather's friend to keep Sawyer still and safe. "You're sure? You _know_?" Walt nods again. "She better be." With this the grown man stalks off, back in the direction he came, obviously unwilling to be around the others in the moments of such high tension.

"Is that true? That she'll be okay?" Michael asks his son, after Sawyer is gone.

"Yes." _I hope,_ Walt thinks, closing he eyes—he can barely feel her out there, and he knows that's she's keeping him out. _Stay safe._

The next day, a crowd forms around Claire and her baby. Sawyer is there, because as much of a bad boy as he is, seeing a woman have a baby out in the middle of nowhere is something that gives them hope, whether anyone wants to admit it or not. Somewhere in here, Heather comes out of the jungle, walks right up beside him before he notices her.

"This place is making me nuts," She says, and her voice is hoarse, as if she's been screaming all night. Sawyer jumps at the proximity of her voice, and in the blink of an eye his grin transforms into a scowl.

"What the hell was up with you disappearing last night?"

"Bother you?" Heather responds, obviously tending towards a playful (though exhausted) tone.

"Yes." This time it is her turn to look shocked. Sawyer tilts his head, seems all the more irritated by the surprised look on her face. "Yes, it bothered me. Okay? I don't need to know where you are all the time, but damn it, don't just go running off into the jungle without a word." Heather, still somehow unable to get past the first 'Yes' (which is a large admission for Sawyer, regardless of how good of terms they are on), watches him almost blankly. The man resents this, rolls his eyes, turns to go—but she catches him, slipping her hand into his larger one, and each is heavily calloused. She pulls him back to her, circling her other arm around his midsection.

"Yeah. Okay." Then, because she is even more so shocked that she feels bad about it, adds, "I'm sorry." Sawyer tightens his grip of her hand, and then leans over and kisses the crown of her forehead, in a brief but emotional moment.

"It's all right."


	18. Dear Mr Sawyer

"We are all candy covered on the outside,  
Peel away the shell and we're frightened on the inside.  
We are all angry, angry on the outside,  
Peel away the shell and we're rotten on the inside."  
Jack Off Jill

** Chapter Seventeen**

Heather is going through Sawyer's things one day, organizing them. She's now privy to where he hides the bulk of it, and has even dragged some of the stuff she managed to scrounge for herself into the same spot. Currently though, she is inside of the tent, organizing things by size and purpose—not only does it help her put the things in order, but it lets her make a mental checklist of what they have and do not have. There is a rustle at the flap of the tent, and Heather looks over to see Sawyer toss in his shirt.

"And what are _you_ doing?" She asks, arching an eyebrow at his grin.

"Gonna go get some more wood for Sayid's signal fire that isn't going to do a damn thing," He replies, playfully cocking his head to the side, something she hadn't seem him do in a while.

"With your shirt off?" Heather responds in a long drawl.

"Sorry sweetheart, but there are other women on this beach too you know. Gotta give them something to think about on the long island nights."

"Oh, get out of here already!" Heather picks up some non-consequential item and chucks it at him as he dives out of sight. When she is finished with the smallest pieces of the wreckage (how Sawyer managed to find lone screws and bolts she'll never know), Heather lays back, no interest in going out in the sun. She takes the shirt Sawyer threw at her, at it is surprisingly enough, not sweat drenched. Using this as a pillow, she stretches out for a nap, falling asleep to the irony of the faint smell of cologne on a deserted island. _I wonder when he's going to run out of that,_ is her last conscious thought

It's still light out when she wakes up, though the intensity of it has changed. Sitting up, she finds that her jeans have been unbuttoned and unzipped, left provocatively open. Rolling her eyes, she fixes this, muttering "asshole" under her breath, but not without affection.

Heather turns to straighten out his shirt, so that it isn't a bundled heap on the floor (he must have came back while she was napping and gotten another, instead of waking her), when something falls out of it. She thinks it might be trash at first, but opens it to make sure. _Dear Mr. Sawyer,_ the first line reads in the sloppy scrawl of a child. Seeing this, and without going on, she wonders if maybe Sawyer _has_ a little boy or girl; then again, 'Mr. Sawyer' isn't exactly what you'd call your father.

Instinctually, something tells her to put it down, but it isn't that easy. Though she doesn't _want_ to read it, she feels obligated to: something deep in her gut demands that she read it. As if… as if it's ordering her to face something that she already knows.

Slowly, she begins to read.

_Dear Mr. Sawyer, you don't know who I am, but I know who you are-_ Her gut tightens, and suddenly she feels nauseas, not quite unlike the day Boone died. _and I know what you done. _Fighting down the urge to vomit, she's glad that she's inside the tent and not standing. The room seems to spin, and she knows that's its not all because of the letter.

It's because for some reason she's fighting something inside of herself. Something that's struggling to get out in the open, something she's known since- since when? Since Walt got hurt. Around then. When that bloody hole was opened up in her mind and everything tried to crawl inside.

Heather isn't sure what she's fighting, only that it hurts. She's never been empathetic, able to feel what others are feeling, until this place, until Walt. Even then, premonitions, reaching into a memory and then feeling it, are different things. _Put it down!_ Her mind screams, though her gut is tangled and still urging her forward. _For Christssake, put it down!_

She clenches her jaw, continues, squinting against the dizziness around her. Reading it is one thing, but feeling… feeling whatever hatred and pain has gone into this, it feels like she's tearing a half-healed wound open again, the wound that Walt created.

_You had sex with my mother and then you stole my dad's money all away. _There are tears in her eyes, trying to stop FEELING this, trying to stop SEEING it. _So he got angry, and he killed my mother. And then he killed himself, too._ A dark, screaming nightmare rises up to her consciousness, again, something from the dark days after healing Walt.

She hurries over the next few lines, unable to stop but not wanting to absorb any more of it. _All I know is your name, but one of these days, I'm gonna find you and I'm gonna give you this letter, so you remember what you done to me. You killed my parents, Mr. Sawyer_ At this she throws the letter back to his shirt, and stumble-crawls out of the tent—once outside, Heather only manages about three steps before she cannot keep the contents of her stomach down, and vomits into the sand.

"Hey!" She hears Sawyer cry out behind her, and then he's running over to her, on his way back from the caves, with water. "Hey!" He drops the bag he's carrying without any hesitation, goes to her. She's shaking, hates that this is always the way her body reacts now: involuntary shaking, queasiness, dizziness. He turns, goes into the tent, and she can hear him ruffling through things, looking for something—there is a sound of bottled pills (probably aspirin, Tylenol) and then, suddenly, silence. Heather already knows what he's found, and then the man comes out from inside of the tent.

Staggering, she gets to her feet, wiping her mouth. She can see the fury (and maybe fear) on his face, and knows that she will not cave under it—it's not in her nature, just as it's not in Sawyer's to be understanding before succumbing to anger.

"You read it, didn't you?"

"Yes." No point in lying.

"You think you have the right to go through my personal stuff?" She doesn't say anything in response, but gives him a steadying glare, wishing she were more sure of her footing in the uneven sand. Heather does not bait him with the fact that she WAS going through his things and he didn't seem to mind before. "So?" He asks, tone curt and poisonous.

She's looking at him like a beaten dog, and knows already that anything she says is going to incriminate her. Heather looks at the sand, tries not to sway: "Sawyer… I know what happened. I know that you wrote it. I-"

"Sure you did!" He roughly jabs at his temple. "Because all you have to do is look around, donchyou? What gives you the right-"

"I never." Her growl is forceful enough to stop him for a moment, his body tense and leaning forward, fists clenched. "I have _never_ tried to read your thoughts, if that's what you think this is. _Never._"

"Then how the hell do you know that I wrote it?" He tone is full of a dark triumph, and Heather's jaw opens, knowing that this is going to be uglier than she thought.

"Because I saw it. I saw all of it when I picked the fucking letter up. It was like sticking a knife in an electrical socket." Her tone is cold, trying to even with him, and know that it's useless.

Sawyer judges her for a moment, and then under his breath hisses, "Bullshit."

"Don't make me prove it," Heather's voice is guarded, prepared. "Don't do this to us." _God only knows how fragile this whole thing is,_ she thinks to herself.

"I've got one thing you need to know, missy. I'm a man with secrets, and I'm not sure if there can be an 'us' between me a fucking psychic, mind-reader, whatever you are." He steps closer to her, menacing, and then it hits her like a wave: secrets—and as he says this, those very secrets he wants to hide come floating towards the top of his mind, he's practically SCREAMING them in her ears.

All the conning (which she partially knew about from reading the letter and the guesswork about the name, but didn't want to believe).

All the self-hatred (which she most certainly was aware of).

There is rain.

There is a gunshot.

"Oh God Sawyer," Her tone changes from defiant to an almost whisper, eyes not seeing him but seeing through him and his past. _If he wasn't FORCING this on me, then I could stop it. I'd never want this, _she assures herself. After all, she's never gone prying into Sawyer's mind, and never planned on it. "What have you done to yourself?"

Suddenly his large, calloused hand is tight around her upper arm, squeezing painfully, bringing her close to him. The pain brings her sharply out of her spell, and his mind closes like a door slamming shut in her face—now they are just two people, a man and a woman on the beach at dusk.

"You're hurti-"

"Stay out of my mind," This is the most frightening she has ever seen him, and his words are clearly a threat. "And I don't want your fucking pity-" Before he can finish, Heather retaliates: she pushes herself into his head, attacks blindly. For him this feels like someone has somehow found the most vulnerable part of him, a center where physical and emotional sensations come together, and wrenched it as hard as they can. He staggers back—Sawyer is not new to physical pain, but the intensity of the emotional pain is something that he has not allowed to reach him in decades.

"Don't you ever lay a hand on me in anger!" Heather screams at him, unable to keep the hysterics out of her voice. She's frightened for Sawyer, doesn't know how badly or what exactly she did to hurt him, and she's afraid of him. _Of all people,_ she wants to shout in his face, _of all people you should fucking know better!_ However Heather doesn't have time for this, turns on her heels and runs—runs like she used to in the mornings across Sahara flatlands.

It couldn't have been long ago that she promised Sawyer she wouldn't be doing this anymore, the running off. Regardless, the woman takes off into the quickly darkening jungle.

She runs for hours, until she cannot run any longer, is all but crawling. Finally, unable to force herself further, Heather collapses against a tree, panting, her heart beating hard in her chest. Fading in and out of consciousness, she replays the scene in her mind over and one: Sawyer's parents, his fathers boots from under the bed, and then a gunshot. Then rain, mud, someplace secluded, and another gunshot—this time Sawyer's behind it, and there's an innocent (though innocence is so very relative, isn't it?) in front.

_This island is pulling me apart,_ she thinks, crying, and it starts to rain—and the rain is as it always is here, heavy and drenching without warning.

"What do you want from me!" The woman screams, but her voice is lost in the trees and the darkness and the rain. She feels that hole inside of her that Walt, the island, opened up, and she feels impossibly naked, bared down to her soul. She didn't ask for this, doesn't want the weight of anyone else's past but her own. "How am I supposed to fix this?" She croaks, soaked to her bones, sobbing.

Consciousness teeters into unconsciousness, and night on the island devours her. Somewhere in this time, something dark and foul creeps up to her, and nests inside that hole.


	19. Troubling Discovery

**Author's Note:** I'd like to say a thanks to hjr for you review, it was heartening. As for the speed with which I'm putting up chapters--if it throws anyone off, I'm sorry. The thing is, I've had a lot of this written from a while ago (when I was contemplating even posting it because I thought it was pure crap, lol). It continues up until the more recent happenings, so once I get 'caught up' with what it happening right now in the second season, the posts will be much more spaced out.

* * *

"Your faith reads like fiction now.  
Your demons keep calling, and you let them inside".  
The Clarks

** Chapter Eighteen**

"Where do you think you're going?" Walt spins, immediately in a defensive pose, as Kate comes out from behind a few bushes. She knows by the way Walt is walking that he's searching for something, and by the way he's sneaking around she can tell that his father probably has no idea where he is. It isn't her job to do any babysitting, but she can't stand by and let the boy get hurt. The image of the child gutted by a boar is still fresh in her mind, to say the least.

Walt gives her a steady look, as if weighing his options. "Heather's hurt," He says, watching Kate carefully. She arches her eyebrows, comes closer to him—her backpack is filled with various island fruits, and a couple coconuts.

"Really? How do you know?"

The boy gives her a condescending glare. "I know."

"Right." Kate doesn't argue. "You know where she is?" She figures that even if they don't find Heather, then it will have been better for Walt to have determined this for himself, rather than her dragging him unwillingly back to the caves. Though she isn't keen on admitting it to herself, and hopes he isn't right, Kate begins to worry. After all, she'd seen the two of them together, and there was always that eerie sense that they were talking to each other without saying a thing.

"Yeah. But…" She sees his resolution waver the slightest bit. "I'm trying to follow her, but she's getting darker." Kate looks at him blankly, and the boy tries to explain. "Here-" He points to the middle of his upper torso, shortly below his rib cage—his solar plexus. "That's what I'm following. But it's getting harder to see her. She's hurt."

"Okay, lead on." Kate starts searching for footprints, but right now all she can see is where Walt has turned himself around again and again. It's almost impossible to make out anything that wasn't made that morning, because of the heavy rainfall the night before. However, a short while later, Kate is able to find faint tracks where it looks like someone may have been running and fell—Walt, not seeing this, keeps in the same direction, and she figures that's some kind of sign.

She's about to tell Walt that there's no one here, they need to go back to the caves because his father will be worried, whenever the boy darts away. Sprinting after him, her stomach lurches when she sees Heather half-propped against a tree, looking pale and shivering.

"Heather!" Walt yells, and there is no response from the woman. The boy kneels down to her, lays his ear across her temple in a way that strikes Kate as odd. She jogs over, and hears Walt whisper, "Wake up!" Heather's eyes open and then-

Then there is pain, and Kate is reliving Tom's death. Not just his death, but all the emotional trauma that came with it then and for years afterward… suddenly she is not just feeling her pain either, but also his confusion, his anger, his sense of betrayal. Being near Heather is like looking into a mirror that's reflecting a lifetime of guilt and pain and nightmares—and not all of it hers. Underneath that surface reflection she can see images that have to have come from the others on the island, and she's seeing a man beating his wife and then shooting himself in the head, over and over and over again. _That's what this is,_ Kate thinks, grimacing against the onslaught.

Clapping her hands to her ears in a defensive gesture (which does absolutely no good), Kate grinds her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut. "Make it stop!" She shouts, but her voice doesn't rise over the chaos in her mind, which is somehow radiating from Heather.

"Leave her alone!" Walt screams, and Kate can feel his fears, his hurt that his father left him, the emptiness in him from his mother's death. She feels like she's sitting next to a huge amplifier, only its not distorting noise but memories. "LEAVE. HER. ALONE!" Kate watches as Walt brings back a fist and slams it down on Heather's chest—she wants to stop him, but can't bring herself to tear her hands away from the sides of her head. She feels like her teeth and her skull are going to shatter—Walt hits the woman harder this time, directly into her solar plexus.

Heather coughs, leans forward, retches. What comes out is a bit of blood, and something long, black, slimy—some kind of snake-like slug. The mental static immediately ends, and Heather is lying on her side, gasping for air. Before Kate can react Walt tries to smash the vile creature, but it rises like a thick, condensed cloud of smoke, and vanishes away.

Walt pulls Heather to him, who is still making rattling gasps, as if whatever she spat out had been suffocating her, and Kate doesn't doubt that it was. The boy tries to soothe her, speaking soft, calm words and running a small hand over her hair. When she can move again, Kate kneels down in front of them, tries to look into Heather's eyes, which thankfully, seem aware of her surroundings.

"We're going to get you some help. Don't worry." Heather coughs, and to Kate's surprise, shakes her head. Color is returning to the woman's cheeks.

"Don't tell Jack," Her voice is hoarse, but audible.

"Heather-"

"He has enough to worry about." She winces in pain, sits up straight, and manages a brief smile for Walt. "Thanks. I owe you one."

"No, this makes us even," Walt replies, smiling back, obviously pleased with himself and that she is all right.

"Heather, you have to see Jack," Kate's look of concern is met with a sigh from Heather. Walt appears to agree, but doesn't say anything for the time being.

"Kate, I appreciate it. But do you really think there's anything a doctor can do… about… about whatever just happened?" Heather coughs harder, and this time there is a small bit of blood left where she covered her mouth with her hand.

"See! You could be bleeding internally, you need-"

"And in which case if I was, there'd still be nothing he can do. Remember Boone?" Kate's face becomes hard, sullen. "Besides," Heather licks her teeth, which are stained red. "I bit my tongue. That's all it is." Kate has the distinct feeling that Heather is saying this more to convince herself than anyone. A moment of silence passes between them, and finally Kate sighs, runs a hand through her hair.

"Why are you out here anyway? Alone?" Heather looks away, seeming particularly miserable at the question, and Kate thinks about what she saw during the 'fit'… "Sawyer. You know about Sawyer."

Heather looks back to Kate sharply. "And apparently I'm not the only one." Her tone is solid and off-putting, but not directly angry.

"Yeah, well… yeah."

Walt watches with a stony silence, doesn't ask what they're talking about, though it looks like he almost wants to. Heather is fairly surprised that he doesn't, and perhaps he will when she and he are alone.

"I kept seeing all these terrible things while that… thing was in me. Like it was gorging itself on the pain in it. I… I'm sorry if I hurt you."

"I'm okay." Kate tries to smile, but knows its weak, probably shaking. Heather starts to stand, and Kate does as well, helps the woman to her feet. There she sways for a moment, but seems, generally, to be all right—which is surprising, so much that you would almost forget that she just coughed up some kind of sadistic smoke creature, the likes of which Kate does not see again until sometime later on the island.

"So what was that thing? Do you know? I've never seen anything like it," Kate asks, as they begin walking back towards the caves, their pace slow and allowing Heather to take her time with her footing.

"I don't know. But it… it wasn't exactly nice. Some kind of parasite." Heather licks her lips, concentrating hard. "It would have killed me, eaten me from the inside out. Sucked all the life out of my bones." Walt shivers beside her, and she takes his hand, gives it a squeeze. "But as long as I have this big guy looking out for me-"

"You didn't make it easy, either," Walt replies, voice low. "You _said_ no secrets." Heather sighs, hangs her head a bit.

"I didn't want-"

"I know," He cuts her off again, and Kate is pretending not to be paying attention out of politeness. "You didn't want me to know that you had a row with Sawyer, and were leaving alone. Whatever he's done that you two aren't telling me about, you didn't want me to see that, because you-"

"Walt," Heather grits. If he has to say it, can't it wait till they're alone? Can't he not ask aloud, at least? She doesn't think that Kate will exactly start gossip, but it's a sensitive subject.

"Because you might love him? Why can't you just talk to each other?" Heather can see Kate twitch a bit at this, but not much—her back is to Heather.

"Come on Walt, can we talk about this later?"

"No!" And now the boy has completely stopped, and Heather turns to face him—Kate does the same, though much more reluctantly, and Heather feels sort of bad for her. "That thing was killing you! You could have got hurt just because you and Sawyer act like… act like… kids!"

"It's not that easy. If it makes you feel any better, I'm staying away from him from now on." Her eyes are downcast, don't meet his.

"Well you'll have to, seeing as he says he's coming on the raft my dad's building," Walt says, and immediately Heather looks up at him.

"What?"

"The raft. I told you about it." Heather remembers this, and that she was severely unhappy. She wouldn't try to stop Michael, but knew that it was going to hurt her—like part of herself gone abroad. Sawyer's involvement, however, is news to her.

"Sawyer's going on it? He's leaving?"

"Yeah. He traded my dad lots of stuff for a spot on it." Though Heather and Walt are not paying attention to her, Kate has also taken her own interest in this information.

"That bastard," She growls under her breath, and the anger in it seems to steady her, gives her purpose. The rest of the trip back is in silence, and Heather stews for the rest of the day, alone and deep in her own thoughts.


	20. Right Through You

"Who'd you think you're kidding?  
He's the earth and heaven to you.  
Try to keep it hidden—honey we can see right through you."  
Disney Hercules Soundtrack

**Chapter Nineteen**

"What do you want?" Sawyer asks, automatically sneering as he sees Heather come around a bend of the beach, towards the raft.

"To talk."

"Got nothing to say to you."

"Good," Heather responds, standing over him and blocking his reading light as he lounges by a tree. "Then you can listen." He's trying to hide his interest, but she can see through the act. "I know why you're leaving-"

"Do you?"

"I thought you didn't have anything to say?" Sawyer makes a 'Continue as you will' gesture with his hand, expression becoming even more sour than before. Heather however is not here to make him mad, because she knows he won't listen to her at all if he is. "Right. Sawyer," She kneels down, trying to break even with him, though she knows her chances are slim. "Setting off on that raft isn't going to get rid of your guilt."

His body tenses, tone curt, angering: "What makes you think I feel guilty?"

"Because everyone with a rough childhood does."

"Rough?" He asks smiling coldly, eyes glinting dangerously at the understatement. "Either way, sweetheart, I'm not a kid anymore."

"If you run away on that raft, you might as well be." Her delivery is almost as cold, and there is no ounce of pity in it—Sawyer, at the least, can't accuse her of that, because she knows damn well how he'll react to it if she slips.

"Look who's talking about running away," He retorts.

"Everything I've run from is right here on this island," Her eyes reflect in his with the same intensity. "Not in my past."

"You think you know so much about me," Sawyer growls, with all the malice of a cornered animal. "Let me tell you honey, you're all the same. You're the type to fall for the fuck-up, the bad boy, just so you get to fix him, make yourself feel better." The last word is guttural, spat between his teeth.

_Oh Sawyer_, she thinks. _If you're expecting me to break down and cry, or slap you and walk off in a huff, you're going to have to try harder than that._

"Tell me something, then. When have I been trying to fix you? When have I ever coerced you into _anything_? I've never asked anything more of you than what you've asked of me. Though I'll say it, I'd prefer if you stopped wallowing in the shithole you've made yourself-"

"I used you; you were _convenient._ That's all, sugar." Again, trying to press her, drive her away—Heather has a feeling that this isn't about hurting _her_ at all, but part of the same backwards plan of punishing himself.

"Were you using me when you told me where all your stuff is hidden? How about when you came up to the caves to apologize? Was it convenience when you camped out by my side for days whenever I could barely sit up? You're right, what a fucked up, bad boy thing to do." At this Sawyer stands, and Heather does too.

"Why do you think you know me?" His body language is more severe than it was before, but this is mostly in trying to compensate for his tone—his question actually does sound curious, instead of threatening.

"Because I know more than you think." _I know that you like when it rains at night, that you want me safe, that you're afraid of staying because it hurts to want to heal._ "I know that you're going on that raft because you're trying to punish yourself—not just for the things you've done, but because you think that guilt is weak. I know that you're going on that raft because you're afraid that if you try to get better you might fail."

"I don't feel guilty and I'm not afraid," She isn't nearly convinced, and her expression lets him know that loud and clear. Sawyer is standing less straight, and she has managed to take some of the wind out of him.

"Okay." Heather takes one of his hands in hers, rubs it lightly, tenderly. He doesn't remove his hand, but his body tenses, uncomfortable. "I won't think you're weak if you change your mind. Your call." His resolution is stony, silent as she makes her way back down the beach.

- - -

Heather effectively avoids Sawyer, and vice versa. Some nights she sleeps in the caves, others she spends out—though she never blocks Walt out of her mind again, knows that it makes him uneasy when she's alone. As far as she knows, Sawyer does not come looking for her, but Walt lets her know that the man seems to have periods where he completely looses his train of thought, or stares off into nothingness.

_At least he's thinking about it,_ is her only consolation, and even that becomes threadbare quickly, as the raft is ever more ready to set off.

Then the talk of the "Others" coming effectively spreads to Heather (and everyone else)—Heather skirts around the others, finding Jack when there are relatively few people around him, before he sets off for the dynamite.

"Jack, can we talk?" Jack sees the concern in her eyes, and though he is a very busy man, pauses, takes her aside for a moment.

"What is it?"

"I don't think anyone's coming for us. Not right now at least."

"Do you think Rousseau's lying?" His question is very serious, lowering his tone. He may not believe in any kind of sixth sense for himself, but he's seen Heather's ability, and he's not going to write off whatever she has to say.

"No. At least, she doesn't think she is. But you can't trust her."

"I wasn't planning on it. So what do you think?"

"All I know Jack is that ever since… ever since Walt, I've been able to feel things before they happen. On…" And here she looks away from his eyes for the briefest moment, and then forces herself to meet his gaze again. "On the day Boone died, I felt terrible all day, and right before I heard the news-" Her mouth grimaces, unable to properly describe it, but it seems that Jack has a feel for what she's saying. "There's none of that now. I don't think we're in any danger." Then, with a wry smirk, as an afterthought: "Not anymore than usual, at least."

"I hope you're right, but-"

"But you have to play it on the safe side. I understand. I just… just so you know. Be safe."

"We'll try."

As Jack walks off, Heather passes Hurley who is following him. She brushes him for a short instant, but all of a sudden, a random thought pops into her head, and she's asking him something before she's aware that she was even thinking about it. "Hey Hurley?"

"Uhm, yeah?" He turns, looking obviously preoccupied. They have never been on close terms, but there is no bad blood between them.

"Your CD player. Can I have it?" _Oh._ And now her conscious mind has caught up with her subconscious, which must have associated the large man with the thing.

"Yeah, uh, sure. I mean, the batteries are dead, so it won't-"

"Thanks, I owe you one." Heather smiles, and then takes off across the beach, back towards the caves—for the first time on the island she seems to be running with for a positive reason.


	21. Departure

"_I want to take you far from the cynics in this town_ and kiss you on the mouth.  
We'll cut our bodies free from the tethers of this scene,  
Start a brand new colony, where everything will change—  
We'll give ourselves new names."  
The Postal Service

**Chapter Twenty**

"Didn't know if you were coming," Sawyer greets her, and she can see that he doesn't have the will to put up a cocky attitude about it, with the stress of just being ready to leave. Instead, he looks relieved, glad even, and the color is high on Heather's cheeks from running back from the caves, afraid she might end up missing him. She stops a few feet in front of the man, who had stepped away from the raft as she approached at a jog.

"Well here I am," She is slightly out of breath, but she is smiling.

"Decided you're better off without me?" He asks with a dry humor, arching an eye at her smile. "Happy to see me go after all?"

"Neither. I brought you a present." At this the man's eyes light up, appealing to his insatiable curiosity.

"Really now?" His voice betrays any calm collectedness, and she can hear the giddiness of getting ready to leave it in. It hurts to know that he's excited about leaving, but she still pulls a bag from behind her, along with Hurley's CD player. Sawyer's eyes immediately fall. "Hun, this thing's been dead for a while. I saw the fat guy trying to fix it, but the batteries are dead, and I'm not taking any of the few batteries out on the ocean-"

"Hush and listen." From the bag Heather removes a plastic, black square that is about the size of a Rubik's cube. "I once had a friend who worked for a solar energy company. We were old buddies, and I met up with her in one of my infrequent encounters with western civilization in South Africa." She unfolded the cube, which laid out wing-like structures that stretched a good foot and a half across. Dangling from this was a cord, and at the end of it, encased, rechargeable batteries. "See? You'll be out in the sun a lot, and you can just open this for a while, and then you can get some music. I got this for a great deal, but it still cut a major hole in my expenses."

"That supposed to mean that I owe you?"

"No, that's supposed to mean that if you drop this in the ocean, I will swim out and find you, and then kick your southern ass." Her tone is amiable, and she turns to put this back into the bag, "I also brought you some of the CDs I found lying around the is-"

Heather doesn't get to finish her sentence because Sawyer has gruffly pulled her to him, and firmly pressed his lips against hers. She is shocked at first, but warms to the brief, hard kiss. When he releases her (hands at her waist) she can still feel the scratch of stubble across her lips and cheeks.

"I don't have to go," He tells her, and his voice is low, brutal, _needing_. "Just tell me not to. Tell me to stay with you, because I don't have to go." Her eyes water, and she blinks away tears—usually she can control them, but this is testing her.

_God damn you Sawyer,_ she thinks, tears threatening to spill over her cheeks. _Why couldn't you have decided this earlier?_ Heather stands on her toes, wraps her arms around his neck, holds him to her.

"Yes you do." His body tenses, and she kneads softly at the back of his neck. "You've got to go and sort yourself out. If you stay, you'll resent yourself and me for going back on your word. You've got some thinking to do, that you can't do with me around." She pulls back enough to where she can look into his eyes, which are a brilliant blue in perfect reflection of the ocean and the sky. "Besides," And against her will, the tears start down her cheeks, and she struggles to continue smiling in jest. "Besides, how else will the rescue-team know what a jackass we've had to put up with all this time?"

Sawyer chokes a laugh, which comes out tight and squeezed from the pressure in his throat. He's finding himself blinking back tears, but tries not to make it too obvious.

"Watch out for Walt for me, will you?"

"Of course." She expects him to throw in a joke, but he doesn't—maybe can't. They squeeze each other tighter, and then it's time for the raft to be launched. Sawyer kisses the crown of her forehead like she remembered from the morning after Boone died—and then turns, wiping his eyes none-too-gently with the palms of his hands, boards the raft.

- - -

Later, after she can no longer see the raft on the horizon, only a few watchers are left. Heather has her arms folded across her chest, and finally hangs her head, turns to leave, when an older black woman comes up to her. She doesn't know who the woman is, but she seems serene enough, with a strangely mysterious (and content) smile on her face.

"Did he tell you he loved you?" Heather looks the woman over, wonders what kind of question that is, and then decides that it's harmless enough. Besides, it's one she needs to answer for herself anyway, isn't it?

"Yes. I think he did."


	22. Track 4

"I've got no illusions about you…"  
Ani Difranco

**Chapter Twenty-One**

"Hey, where'd you get that from?" Michael asks Sawyer, who has taken out the CD player, and is looking through the bag of CDs that Heather gave him some hours ago.

"Heather gave it to me."

"It still works?" Sawyer nods, and Michael decides to leave him alone, because for once Sawyer seems to be happy enough to be left doing what he's doing, and isn't bothering anyone. Besides, Michael could swear that the man's eyes were red and somewhat swollen earlier, and if Sawyer was crying, that's enough to warn Michael off from upsetting the situation.

Sawyer stops shuffling through the CDs when he sees ones that has something handwritten on it. Across the top of the CD is a small, but entirely legible scrawl: _Play me! Track #4!_ Sawyer arches an eyebrow. "What the hell, why not," He says softly under his breath, and Walt gives him a brief sideways look, and then Sawyer pulls the headphones on, puts the disc in, and skips to the fourth song.

"_You can't hide behind social graces,  
so don't try to be all touchy-feely."_

Right away, Sawyer snorts. Maybe the message hadn't been for him. He's never seen Heather's handwriting, and someone could have written that for her in the first place, not for him at all. The next line though, seems to strike deeper, and he starts to listen in earnest.

_"Cause you lie, in my face of all places  
But I've got no problem with that really."_

Could be to him after all, he thinks, without much pleasure. He has done his share of lying on this island, that's for sure. _Christ,_ he thinks, jaw tight. _You're entire life. All the people that've ever known you call you…call you after him. Sawyer._ His brow furrows, and he closes his eyes, knows that Walt is watching him but tries not to think of that.

_"What bugs me, is that you believe what you're saying.  
What bothers me, is that you don't know how you feel.  
What scares me, is that while you're telling me stories,  
you actually believe that they are real."_

_Oh come on, _Sawyer thinks. It may not seem fair to him, but he knows that that's him to a T. _This is how she sees you too, isn't it? You don't know how you feel, you're full of shit and for some reason you believe all of it._ But there isn't any malevolence in it: it only really gets under his skin because it's so goddamn true.

_"And I've got, no illusions about you."_

Sawyer's chest tightens. Had she known about him all along? _No, she didn't. She didn't lie when she said she didn't know. She just… suspected. Now shut the fuck up and just listen._ That was the point. She hadn't known, and even when she did, she still took him as what he was.

_"And guess what? I never did.  
And when I said, when I said I'll take it,  
I meant,  
I meant as is."_

"As is," The man said quietly, half-snorting, but then his mouth turned down, feeling bewildered, hurt, and more than anything else—lost. Heather hadn't wanted to change him, and that was the reason they got on so well together: she had never made any move to try and make him something he wasn't. _As is._

_"Just give up and admit you're an asshole;  
you would be in some good company."_

Sawyer snorted again: _Oh, it's definitely for you, cowboy._

_"I think you'd find, that your friends would forgive you.  
Or maybe I'm just speaking for me."_

Another stifled laugh, but his throat is too constricted, and it feels like he wants to cry more than laugh. He could have hurt her… he might have hit her, the other day, if she hadn't stopped him. How could anyone forgive that? But she knew. She knew his past—or parts of it, didn't she? How could she forgive him that?

_"Cause when I look around,  
I think this, this is good enough.  
And I try to laugh at whatever life brings  
Cause when I look down  
I just miss all the good stuff,  
When I look up, I just trip over things."_

And O_h God_, why had he left? He could have stayed, could have gotten better maybe, if he had only _tried harder_, then maybe, maybe-

_"And I've got no illusions about you..."_

Sawyer puts his head in his hands, and wishes his stupid little ponytail wasn't pulling his hair back, so that he could try to hide behind some of it. Michael smacks the back of Walt's head (not too hard, and Sawyer doesn't hear it after he's turned the volume up nearly as loud as it will go), and roughly gestures for the boy to stop staring at him. Jin just stares out over the water, leaning against their makeshift 'mast'.

_"You can't hide behind social graces,  
cause I don't buy it like everyone else."_

Maybe 'social graces' wasn't the right term for it, but the gist was the same: Heather had accepted his bad-boy antics, but she hadn't been fooled by them. She'd taken everything about him with a grain of salt, and that was why on the beach, when she came to tell him he didn't have to go, the bad-boy, asshole front hadn't scared her away. She'd probably seen through him the second he opened his mouth to her at the caves. It's a humbling thought, that Heather had understood him from the start: it makes Sawyer feel all too exposed, especially trapped on this tiny raft.

_"And you can lie, in my face of all places  
Just don't lie to yourself."_

How long had he been lying to himself? Telling himself that he couldn't get better, that assholes are always assholes, that he had chosen to be this way for life, that redemption was just a pretty word for Catholic girls and boys? Why is it _so fucking hard_ just to come clean with it all?

_"Cause I've got no illusions about you.  
And guess what? I never did.  
And when I say, when I say I'll take it,  
I mean,  
I mean as is."_

"I'm trying. I promise, I promise I'm trying," Sawyer murmurs into his clenched hands, feeling guilt ache through his body, something he's all too familiar with. In that guilt though, there is something different, something new: something he hadn't let himself consider in so long. _Hope._ Hope that he can pick up the pieces and make things _work_ for once. That hope only makes the guilt harder to bear, but Heather had said that he needed this time to sort himself out, and that's what he's planning on doing.

"I'll get my shit together. I mean it."

_"…As is…"_


	23. Intermission

**Intermission**

This is the line between Season One and Season Two. Now, I've had a lot of Season Two stuff done for a long while now, but only recently felt motivated to continue (because the first 'half' of the storyline is bearable, but I'm not so sure if the same can be said for what's coming next). So, I would ask readers to remember the first disclaimer about supernatural occurrences, as at this point, they will be frequent, and often damn powerful.

In any case, if you're still reading, I must be doing something decent, right?

House lights down!  
Stage lights up!

And we're on.


	24. Visions of Oceans

"Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes-  
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown."  
The Rolling Stones

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

Heather is later led to the caves, along with the rest of them. She is not as worried as some, and seems not necessarily lifeless, but distant. Somehow, leaning back against the side of the caves, she finds something soothing in the endless drone of nearby voices of all the people brought up from the beach, and nods off to sleep. A few men and women watch her warily (even if they don't know that she's the one that cured Walt, they've seen her around Sawyer, and that grants them a good deal of curiosity); without warning, her countenance changes. From a resting complicity, an ominous near-terror passes over her features, and then continues into the land of horror.

Almost immediately the woman sits up, screaming.

Charlie is near by, and starts yelling for help. Three other men (all substantially larger than him) come over, and at first they don't know _what_ she is screaming, but after a while, they can hear names in it.

"Walt!" She screeches, and everyone in the caves quickly becomes silent, a terrible quiet like ice spreading through each of them—capitalizing on the chaos and panic of the entire day. "WaltWaltWaltWalt!"

And then, breaking from that: "JAMES!"

Charlie looks at the other men, and moves to try to calm her, if not so that she doesn't hurt herself, then so that she doesn't upset everyone else—even though her screams (unnatural as cougar shrieks) have already gone beyond that. Somehow, she isn't just screaming, but all the terror inside of her is seeping out, piercing through them.

"WALT!JAMES!WALT!"

"Who's James?" Charlie asks the man next to him, and is met with a hasty shrug. "Know any James?" Then, kneeling down to her, her puts his hand over her arm. "Heather, calm down now, cam down-"

And then, her attention does turn to him, and even though she still screaming about Walt and some James character, he hears her plainly in his head: _Let go of me, you fucking strung out junkie piece of shit!_ In shock, his jaw drops and he does let go of her, and she stands.

Sayid and Shannon return, and Shannon can hear someone screaming Walt—without thinking, runs to Heather. Heather, as if sensing something on the woman, stops screaming, goes to her.

"I saw him."

"Where?" And then, without hesitation, Heather takes Shannon's shoulders, and looks for herself. She sees the scene in the jungle, Walt dripping wet and-

And the message. She can see that Shannon didn't hear it right, but Heather does.

_Don't press the button._

Sayid pries Heather away from Shannon, whose eyes have gone wide and blank. _Sorry,_ Heather manages to grit out, before she loses contact.

"What the fuck is going on! I said what the fuck is going on!" Charlie shouts, trying to corner Heather, while Sayid holds her firm. Heather, while still frantic and practically foaming at the mouth in her craze, has gotten a better grip on herself, and does not hurt Sayid like she hurt Charlie. However, panicking as she is, she is not far from lashing out at all of them. "Who the hell do you think you are!"

"The raft is gone." Though she is not shouting, all those in her immediate area silence themselves.

"What?" Sayid asks, but behind the incredulity, she can hear fear.

"They weren't looking for us. They wanted Walt."

"Who? Who wanted Walt?" Though he is level, maintains some control, she can tell that his heart is beating faster.

"Who fucking else? The Others."

"Who's James, Heather?" This time it's Charlie's turn to interrogate her, but when she looks at him, her eyes are blank.

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't act stupid, who the bloody hell is James? You were only screaming his name!" There is a short pause, and her jaw sets hard. Her body is shivering all over.

"Sayid. Let go of me."

"Heather, I believe that-"

"Or I will hurt you." More silence, Sayid doesn't now how to react to this, partly because he believes her. She can't overpower him, he knows this, but he also knows that Heather has abilities that go beyond the physical realm. He does not, however, release her. "You have three seconds-"

"Look—they're back!" Someone shouts, and as Sayid looks over his shoulder, Heather wrenches herself free of him, though she has a feeling that he's really just letting her go. She makes her way towards the group, and the people part for her, afraid to touch her.

"They aren't coming," Heather says as soon as she is close enough to Jack for him to hear her without her yelling.

"What?" He asks, caught off guard.

"Give your speech, whatever, but the Others aren't coming. They took Walt."

"…What?" By now Jack is tense, and so is Kate. Locke is in the distance still, and Heather hopes that he'll stay there.

"Listen to what I'm fucking saying!" Her voice rises, and it echoes around the caves. "They took Walt off the raft! They shot Sawyer-"

"Who?" Kate asks, and Heather's hands twitch, wanting to choke all of them for their incompetence. She knows that she is starting in the middle when she should start from the beginning, but she feels pressed for time, unbearably rushed.

"The Others, God damn it! LISTEN. I'm going to go through this once." She hates the way they're watching her like she's a child. "They turned on the radar, and there was a blip. They fired the flare. And… and the Others showed up, on a shitty little boat. They took Walt, shot Sawyer, and blew up the raft."

"How do you know?" Heather's jaw hangs open, at a loss for words. Why does matter how she knows, if she does? Have they not been listening? "It's been a very stressful day, maybe-"

"FUCK YOU!" Jack recoils from the intensity of her shout. "Just because you don't want to hear it-"

"Calm down Heather."

"HOW CAN I CALM DOWN? HOW? THEY TOOK WALT!" She has drawn a crowd, and Jack is shifting his weight, uneasy. Even if what she's saying is true, this is not the way to handle it—it's upsetting everyone more than they need, and it's destroying their hope.

"Heather, we can only handle one thing at a time, and with the hatch-" She looks up, and for a moment she doesn't look furious, but rather perplexed, thinking. Jack's voice falters.

"He said something Jack. Walt told Shannon something, and it may have something to do with the hatch. In fact, I'm sure it does." Heather doesn't notice as Locke comes closer in the group. "He said don't-"

"Don't what, Heather?" At the sound of Locke's voice, her vision goes red, and it feels like… like something is trying to get into her brain and remove the message, blot over that part of the memory.

"Stop it!" She screeches at him, clapping her hands over her ears. "Get out, get out!" Locke looks genuinely surprised, but Jack and the rest of them are now watching him with suspicion. Heather doesn't know if Locke means what he's doing (and he doesn't), but something about him is trying to stop her from telling Jack what she needs to. Maybe the island has just chosen him as its representative—God knows he's willing enough. Was that it? The island had instilled him with… what? Some kind of thought scrambler? _Oh, come on, enough with the sci-fi shit._ But there was no other way she could think of putting it. There had been a concrete thought in her head before Locke had come over, and just _seeing_ him was making her thoughts fuzzy and out-of-place.

In a small flurry of motion, Heather spins, twists the gun out of Jack's fingers, levels the barrel at Locke's chest. There are short gasps and screams from those watching (and everyone is).

"Heather, drop the gun!" Sayid's voice is firm, forceful.

"I'm not your god damn girlfriend, Sayid. If I want to shoot him, I'll shoot the son of a bitch." There is a cold clarity to her words, and they understand that she's telling the truth—if one of them tries to be a hero, someone is going to end up shot. "How many more, Locke?" Her question is little more than a growl.

"Heather, I don't know what-" He is trying to remain calm, which is something he's fairly good at. She however, shakes the handgun, lets him know that a wrong answer is not going to be tolerated.

"How many more sacrifices until you realize your precious island isn't what you think! First Boone, and then who next? Walt will not be one of them, Locke." Her voice wavers, but her grip doesn't. "If Sawyer dies, you pathetic _cripple_," And she doesn't know exactly _why_ she says this, because obviously he isn't a cripple, but it has a desired effect—suddenly, Locke is off guard, looks _scared_. "Then they'll be able to send the biggest piece of what's left of you home in a fucking shoebox. Do you understand me?"

His eyes are wide, and he nods, slightly.

"And I won't just be you. I'll burn this island _to the ground_, and it will be all your fault. Just so much more smoke, you fucker." With this, she tosses the gun to the ground, and brushes past him. The others are too stunned for a moment to move, and then Jack is there, as she's packing in a rush.

"I won't have you threatening people," He says, mustering all the sternness he can. She doesn't even bother to look up.

"It wasn't a threat, Doc." She laughs, but it's dark and terrible, and Jack is frightened not just for her, but of her. How far would she go if she thought she had to? It doesn't help that she uses Sawyer's familiar nickname for him. "It was a promise."

Maybe they had been wrong about which one of them was the more dangerous of the couple.

Sun approaches, kneels nearby Heather, who is busy stuffing a backpack full of clothes—taking shirts lying nearby: even though they do not belong to her, no one stops her.

"I want to go with you. For Jin." Heather looks up, licks her lips. The other woman is holding a pair of pants and a shirt that must have been her husband's.

"No." She takes the clothes from her, packs them tight, and then stands. "You're needed here. Jack's going to end up in that hatch whether he likes it or not, and you're the only other one that has any kind medical knowledge." _Besides,_ Heather thinks, and she can see that Sun knows it as well, _you'll slow me down._ Despite this, Sun doesn't look ready to give up so easily. Heather softens for a moment, puts a hand on the woman's shoulder. "I'll do everything I can to bring them all back whole. I promise."

Sun nods, and with that, Heather is leaving the camp, and her legs set into the familiar motion of running. _Irony's a bitch,_ She thinks, and then moves her thoughts to a less conscious arena, 'searching' out Michael, Jin, and Sawyer.

- - -

"You know anyone named James, Kate?" Charlie asks Kate, before she heads out to the hatch. The woman pauses for a moment, thinking, and then shakes her head.

"No, why?"

"Heather, that's what she woke up screaming. She kept screaming Walt and James." The color washes out of Kate's face, but Charlie doesn't see this in the dim light. She had hoped that Heather had just been, like Jack said, too pressured, had had a nightmare of some kind. "Then she didn't even know who the bloke was when I asked. Weird, eh?"

"Yeah."

Sawyer was James. There was no one else it could be.

And if Heather woke up screaming that, then there was no question to it—something had happened.


	25. Until I Drown

"'Cause they can call me crazy if I fail—all the chance that I need,  
Is one-in-a-million; and they can call me brilliant, if I succeed.  
Gravity is nothing to me, moving at the speed of sound:  
I'm just going to get my feet wet, until I drown."  
Ani DiFranco

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

She forces herself to stop running full out when it feels like her chest might explode—Heather knows that she's no good to them if she gets there and then passes out. There is a stark heaviness in her gut, knowing that she's going to need to swim before she can rest easy—and if her body is too exhausted she'll not only drown, but have failed in helping the others. Her chest heaves, but she forces herself not to think of the island in terms of miles or feet—all she judges herself by is how far she can feel Sawyer, or more so, where she last felt Walt.

Time, it feels like, stops for her. Heather doesn't know if this is a blessing or not—the night stretches on endlessly, both trapping her and giving her the time she's sure she needs. Her throat burns hot, and the muscles in her legs are straining—again, she's reminded of running along the Sahara plain lands. This takes more dodging, but the sun isn't beating down on her. In either case, she's making good time (or, since time has become strange and distorted, she's at least covering a good deal of ground).

Suddenly, after pushing through a patch of vines and tall grasses, the jungle has given way to a beach. Alarm bells immediately ring inside of her head; her blood is practically humming, and she knows that she's close.

Then, bright and unmistakable across the expanse of the inky dark waters, is a flare. Heather gasps, steps backward, uncomprehending—and the horrible realization hits her like a sledgehammer to the temple, her knees threatening to give way.

It hadn't happened yet. Walt was still on the raft, still with Michael. Sawyer hadn't been shot. _They just fired the flare-_

Too late. She was too late to stop it, and she had to stand here know that maybe- maybe if she _had_ run the entire way, maybe there would still be time-

But time is a fickle thing on the island. She knows this; after all, Shannon had seen Walt dripping wet. Of course, that memory is too blurry to make much of now, after Locke (voluntarily or involuntarily) fucked with it. A squeezed little noise crawls out from her lips, and then she drops her backpack in the sand, tears off her shoes in a half-run half-hopping motion, and splashes into the water.

_What do you think you're doing?_ Heather asks herself in horror, and it causes her to pause for one moment, up to her chest in lukewarm saltwater. _You can't do this. You won't reach them. Are you stupid? The flare was miles off. _

But she has to do something, anything, can't just let this happen. Can't wait it out.

"WALT! SAWYER!" _You called him James back at the caves. James. You knew after all._ And it sends a deep ache through her chest to know this, like glass in her bones. _James,_ She thinks, screaming all of their names over the water. _That's a perfectly decent name._

Then: "MICHAELJINSAWYER- TO ME! TO ME!" She doesn't know what motivates it, but she knows that the island has a way of… distorting things. Changing them. Has a way of listening, just as it has a way of getting itself heard. _You have to let Walt go. For now. For now._ And with that, she relinquishes her hold on the boy, focuses instead on the others. Heather closes her eyes, thinks of that pit in her stomach—the star, the sun—she feeds it with anger, and because anger alone won't work, she feeds it with love. It's hard to feel both at the same time, but maybe not so much as one would think.

And she finds, as that small sun grows brighter, there are things in the darkness around it looking at her, watching her. Heather's getting attention from things in that black area in-between night and daylight, that twilight between reality and what lay beneath it, the division between which is already thin just by being on this island.

The woman finds that she is putting less anger into it, and more love. Love for Sawyer of course, and love for Walt—but also borrowing it from the others, the memories she has of them. She uses Walt's love for Michael, drawing up the times the boy spent helping his father with the raft. There is also Sun's love for Jin, and Heather knows that Sun would not object to this.

"To me. MichaelJinSawyer." And, after a quick, sharp breath. "MichaelJinSawyerJames. To me."

And it isn't in the water, but she can feel the movement. It's a current, but something much different than the waves—and holding them firmly in her mind, she pulls.

"I'm here," She whispers, unconscious of speaking. "I'm here."

_Heaven and earth,_ Heather thinks, remembers the feel of Sawyer's rough kiss, remembers his words. _I'll move heaven and earth._

And she does.

- - -

"…Do you feel that?" Sawyer asks Michael. It was like someone was tickling him, only on the inside—somewhere above his belly button and below his chest plate. Normally he would have just shrugged it off, but it was such a _strange_ feeling-

"Feel what?" Michael snaps back, but then instead of the brief tickling sensation, it feels like someone has reached into his gut, taken hold, and given a hard tug. Michael's words are cut short, and Sawyer knows it's not just him. For some reason, memories start to come back to him, somehow amplified, like watching a movie exploded onto one of those IMAX screens. He realizes, not without discomfort, that _he isn't the one controlling the process._

"I don't like this," Sawyer growls, and he hears Michael make a sound of agreement.

_Hold on to me,_ Heather's voice in his head, and he and Michael gasp at the same time. _Help me. Hold on._

There is another rough jerk, and it feels like they're being dragged forward, though they aren't moving (or he doesn't think they are).

_JesusChrist. Sawyer. James._ A message specifically for him; he doesn't think Michael heard that one. He listens, because he doesn't have a choice. _Hold on._

And he does.


	26. Dry Land

"Your anger don't impress me,  
The world slapped in your face."  
Goo Goo Dolls

**Chapter 24**

Jin is the first to come up, and Heather is startled by the sudden splashing near her, and gasping noises—she doesn't know what she was expecting, but seeing a man suddenly _appearing_ next to her was not part of it.

"Jin!" She calls, reaching out to him, pulling him to her as best she can—he's larger, though certainly not so much so as Sawyer or Michael. Heather tries not to think of Walt, and bringing the boy to her; she needs to focus on the task at hand, and save those she can. She can't even feel the boy within her mind's reach, and that scares her. Wherever he is, its dark, secluded. "Jin! It's okay, it's okay!"

Jin begins to calm, stands. He looks around frantically, and then back to her, speaking very quickly in Korean. She catches the words "Sawyer" and "Michael", as well as Walt, and she can't deny his suspicion of her. Instead of trying to explain, she holds her hand out to him. If he's here, after all, he might as well help. When he gives her a long, distrustful glance, she sighs.

"Please. Jin." Then, pointing out over the night-dark horizon with her other hand, adds: "Sawyer. Michael." She brings her hand back to herself, suggesting a gathering, or a pulling. "Please." Jin, cautious, puts his hand in hers, and she opens to him slightly.

_Pull,_ She thinks to him, and though he hears it in his mind, in English, he understands perfectly.

Heather can see Sawyer, still barely clutching a piece of the raft, and Michael atop a bigger piece. Sawyer has vomited into the water, and Heather knows instinctively that if sharks can smell blood, then puke probably wouldn't be too hard either. _Besides. He's bleeding._ She feels bad for doing this to him, knows that he probably feels like she's wrenching his innards out—but the man hasn't got a choice in the matter. Michael seems to be doing better, if only because he refuses to care about his own physical needs or discomforts, and Heather doesn't blame him. A part of Michael has gone dead though, and that makes it harder to hold on to him.

Jin helps as best he can, but this is still only minimal. The man is frightened and highly suspicious of her, and Heather can understand why. _How would I know what happened? Better yet, how the hell am I doing this?_

Then, to Sawyer: "_Sorry babe."_ 'For what?' She can almost hear, still miles away.

And then, clamping down hard around him and Michael, pulls as hard as she can.

It's almost like pulling a stitch. One side of the fabric, in this case the ocean, was drawn close, folding up against the other—bringing Sawyer and Michael to her—and then smoothing back out. Only, there is no point where one sees this happening, save for maybe a brief second of an almost-transparency to the sky: it is more felt than anything, and the feeling, to sensitive human minds, is not at all pleasant.

Heather can feel them break the water before hearing them gasping like drowning men for air. She notes that neither of them showed up with their respective raft pieces—but she hadn't been holding on the to raft, had she? Immediately dropping Jin's hand, she splashes over to Sawyer, and is able to hold his head out of the water while he gets his footing. There are no words, only deep breaths and harsh coughs, as Jin and Heather help Michael and Sawyer out of the ocean and back onto the beach, where they all seem to collapse at once unto the sand.

"They took Walt," Michael croaks, the first words among the four of them. "They took him."

"I know," Heather responds, and begins to hand out dry clothes. "Change into these. I'm going to go get firewo-"

"You _know_? What the hell is that supposed to mean? You weren't _there_ when they took my boy-"

"Cool it," Sawyer growls, voice water-logged and not without a hint of the pain in his shoulder.

"No, I won't cool it! How do you know about Walt? The only way I can tell-"

"Is if I'm one of them. Because after all, I wasn't there with you all when the plane crashed. And Ethan managed to sneak in, so why couldn't I? That it?" Heather glowers at him. She feels guilty enough for what happened to Walt, without this bullshit put on her. He glares back, jaw set. She stands, brushing sand off of herself, and going towards the jungle for firewood. "Sawyer, stay," She adds, seeing the man begin to rise. "I need you all in dry clothes, and that bullet wound isn't going to help you pick up wood." She begins to walk away, when Michael stands abruptly, shouting at her back.

"Hey! Hey, I was talking to you! How do I know you're _not_ one of them-" Heather spins—she gave him the chance to let it slide, but the last thing she needs is this. The woman jabs a finger at his chest.

"My name was on the manifest. They checked it right after they found out about Ethan—ohhh, trust me, Michael. You're not the first one to come up with that one. I came to save you, so we could go _get_ Walt back. Now stop making an ass out of yourself, and put on dry clothes-"

"Don't tell me what to do!"

"Whatever." Heather growls, keeps walking. She had not only respected Michael, but also liked the man as well, despite his constant suspicion of her, but these antics were fast lowering her opinion of him.

"I'm leaving," She hears behind her back, and at first Michael doesn't move. When she does hear him shift, she hears Sawyer's deep, hoarse voice.

"Don't be stupid."

"What did you call me?" Michael asks, and though she tries to keep her pace steady, she can hear the two men bristle behind her. All she can think, is that for his own safety, Michael better not lay a hand on Sawyer—especially not with that bullet wound, which she has yet to inspect without decent light.

"Where are you going to go, hoss? You don't even know where they took him. For cryin' out loud, you don't know where to start."

"And I suppose you know?"

"Well I reckon _she's_ got a better idea than _you._" Michael catches his breath at this, and Heather can feel his eyes on her, but she is nearly around a dune now, will only take a few more steps before she's in reach of the jungle.

Inwardly, she thanks Sawyer.


	27. Pulse and Breath

"I would offer you my pulse, 

I would give you my breath." 

Ani DiFranco**Chapter Twenty-Five**

When she's come back, carrying an armload of relatively dry wood, the men have changed into their respective clothing. For the most part, it seems to fit—Heather took a pair of Jack's pants, though the legs were a slight too short on Sawyer, and Sun had found Jin pants that fit well. Michael's appeared to be somewhat baggy, but no one was complaining. She had done well in the brief amount of time she had.

"There's matches in the front of the bag, get them out for me?" Sawyer shuffles through the bag from where he's sitting, tosses the small flap to Heather, who promptly lowers herself. Jin helps her get the fire going.

"You didn't bring clothes for Walt," Michael says, voice low. There is a sharp tension in the air, but Heather doesn't raise her voice to him. She's exhausted, doesn't want to argue. Now that the immediate crisis has been resolved and her adrenaline levels depleted, she feels hollowed out. "Why didn't you bring any clothes for Walt?"

"Because I knew they took him."

"And how _did_ you know that?"

_He has every right to ask,_ Heather thinks, and sighs. She rubs at her ears for a moment, and with one knee curled to her chest, suddenly appears how she feels: weak, small, tired.

"I was dozing, back at camp. Waiting for them to come back from blowing the hatch open. And I… I saw it. I think Walt sent it to me."

"If you saw it back at the camp, and they hadn't done that yet, then that means you were there tonight," Sawyer asks, and she can tell that he doesn't want to make her look bad in front of Michael, but he, as always, has a curiosity that needs to be sated. "Which means you'd have had to get all the way here in a few hours. And you… you got us maybe, at most, an hour after it happened." There is a pause, Heather hangs her head, thinking of how to answer this. He was right, there _wasn't_ much sense in it.

"You're lying, aren't you? There no way you could have gotten here that soon. You knew it was going-" Michael starts, and Jin looks worried at the growing anger in his voice.

"I'm not lying." Her voice, instead of strong and defiant, is thin, wavering. She's tired of arguing and tired of running and tired of trying to protect and tired of being too late. "I don't know. That's the answer. The island either made the night longer, or stopped time."

"You're nuts-"

"Don't you think I know how it sounds?" She asks Michael, eyes glistening, on the verge of breaking down. Heather still hasn't fully recovered from the incident with Walt, and the event of dragging the three of them to her wasn't exactly fun or easy. "You of all people should know that there are… unexplainable things in the world. Especially here. Walt was different. He told me to come, and maybe it was like time lag, only the opposite way around. That's just it though. He told me to come. And I did."

"Well we need to go find him, and you're taking me to him."

"Well since you asked so nicely," Heather retorts—her voice isn't as waspish as she wants it to be, belying her frustration and exhaustion.

"I'm not joking with you."

"And I'm not taking you anywhere. Not until we've gone back to the caves."

"The caves? Why-"

"Sawyer was _shot_ Michael. They don't know if I went insane and just ran off into the jungle, or if you all really were hurt. Besides, Sun deserves to know that Jin is alive." Jin looks over to her at this.

"I-"

"God damn it Michael, listen to her!" Sawyer, knowing that Heather prefers to speak for herself, bites his tongue for as long as he can. "She just pulled you out of the fishbowl so you could rescue your son, and you're treating her like shit. No one's going anywhere tonight." Michael's jaw drops, and then he stands in a huff.

"They took my son." He stands up, but they can see him sit down again about ten yards away, looking out over the ocean. Jin sighs, walks over to Michael; he does not sit directly next to the angered man, but close enough to offer some form of stoic comfort. Heather turns to Sawyer, and he hates how old, how beaten she looks. The woman takes his arm gently, pushes back the short sleeve to inspect the wound.

"You took this out with your fingers, didn't you?" There isn't any humor in her voice that Sawyer can detect, just edge-of-collapse weariness.

"Yeah. Bad?" He asks her in a serious tone, and suddenly she cups a hand to the side of his jaw and pulls him forward, kissing him hard. When she breaks the kiss, he musters up a mock-grin, though his heart isn't in it: "That bad, huh?" Heather laughs, but it breaks early, sounds too much like she's choking down a sob.

"I can't fix it." Her voice is thick with guilt. Sawyer blinks for a moment, and then understands—she must have been planning to do for him what she did for Walt.

"I wouldn't want you to. Then you'd be able to read my min-" Again, playing for humor, but this time she cuts him off.

"It's because They did it. I've run out of favors. The island's gone." Her voice is distraught, and she digs her nails into her temples, hands clenched into claws.

"Stop!" He takes her wrists, and though he winces at the pain in his shoulder, is able to bring them away from her face. When she looks up at him from under a mass of tangled hair, he can barely recognize her: she looks lost, frightened, alone. He realizes that he's seen her upset, seen her angry—but this is new to him, and it hurts. "Hey, I wouldn't be asking you to do that anyway. I wouldn't let you. Listen to me. It's not your fault."

"I'm sorry." Heather chokes a few tears well up dangerously close in her eyes, and Sawyer holds her with his good arm.

"No. We'll go back to the caves, and Jack will fix me up good as new." He says it as confidently as possible, but the way she's acting is worrying him. "What you need to do right now is rest."

"So do you," She says dryly, and Sawyer smiles, allows himself to tilt his head in the familiar way. Her brow becomes less furrowed, and he takes this as an improvement, though it isn't a smile.

"Not in a sleeping Cinderella mood, cupcake."

"It was Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella was the one with the pumpkin and the glass slipper." Sawyer rolls his eyes, pulls her up to kiss her forehead, and Heather thinks about what the older black woman on the beach had asked her—did Sawyer say he loved her?

Yes. The answer was yes.


	28. Last Calm Before the Storm

**Author's Note: **So, wow! I didn't know anyone was still reading this. I figured it got too long and boring and people just kind of folded. I'm glad to know that people are stilling enjoying it though, that's pleasing. To steam-rolled: I can't make any promises, though I can certainly tell you that I don't plan on killing off Sawyer, as I at least try to maintain some canon basis. On the other hand, I'm thinking of taking a drastic turn with Heather, something that should hopefully tie in with what is to come once the episodes start back up, and the survivors have to deal with finding Walt.

To arwen: thank you! I'm actually surprised there isn't more of the supernatural Lost stuff out there--I mean, realistic stuff is absolutely wonderful, but it's almost like some Lost fanfic writers don't even want to take a chance with acknowledging that the island has some very strange supernatural stuff going on with it. I'm glad you've enjoyed my fanfic so far. **  
**

**

* * *

**  
"But if you could hide beside me  
Maybe for a while,  
And I won't tell no one your name.  
- -  
Don't it make you sad to know that life  
Is more than who we are?"  
Goo Goo Dolls

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

Sometime later, Sawyer wakes to emptiness in his arms. They had lay down to get some rest, with him loosely holding Heather and resting on his uninjured arm. Sitting up, he can see her silhouette outlined by the smoldering, dying embers of the fire. The night, endless as it was, seems finally ready to break—and he has the feeling that this is the last calm before the storm: time would redouble, speed up, make up for the reprieve it had given them, and probably then some. Jin and Michael are further away, Jin's head slumped to his chest. Michael, however, is still silently looking out over the ocean.

Sawyer brushes himself off, goes over to Heather. She draws away from him uncharacteristically, and he realizes that she is crying—and that shouldn't surprise him, but it does. She had managed to hold back tears as long as he had known her, and this was upsetting.

"Sweetheart," And the word isn't cutting or sarcastic, but gruff and full of concern. He sits, tries to draw her to him, as best he can. She pushes him away, none too lightly, and he sighs.

"It's my fault. It's all my fault." Her voice is wavering and watery with tears, her head is buried into her arms, which rest on her propped up knees, not letting Sawyer see her face. "Michael's right, if I could have only done more-"

"It's not your fault." He swallows hard, winces. "It's my fault, if it's anyone's. I made Michael use the flare, even though he didn't want to. That's how They found us."

"And I made you go. I didn't-" There is a break in her voice, when her throat becomes too tight with emotion to work. "I didn't even know. I didn't feel _anything_. I even… I even told Jack that they were safe. No one was coming for them. I was too worried about… about-"

"Me?" His tone is tight, jaw clenched. She sniffles, makes a low groan, but there is no dissent.

"I could have stopped it. I could have. If I had just come sooner, and I didn't. I shouldn't have bothered with the rest of them. I should have left. I could have stopped-"

"Don't." A callused hand lifts her chin, though she struggles (without any real enthusiasm) against it. Her eyes are puffy, red, swollen, her cheeks wet. "You'll start to sound like the Doc if you keep this up," He adds, attempting humor, though his voice is burdened with its own guilt. She tries to smile, probably to make him feel better, but it fails terribly, turning into a couple of wrenching sobs. Not exactly what Sawyer was hoping for, and his face falls, at a loss.

"What am I going to do? Oh God, what am I going to do?" Sawyer lifts her chin again, as it threatens to lower.

"Well first, you're going to take us back to camp, and Jack's gonna fix up my arm." At this, Heather doesn't stop crying, but meets his eyes for the first time—her sobbing settles more in her throat. _This is what she needs,_ Sawyer thinks. Right now, she needs someone to take the reins, at least until she can get back on her feet. He knows plenty about that. Gaining confidence in his story, he continues. "Sun and Jin will realize they're still madly in love, and can't bear to be apart any longer, and we'll have to all learn Korean for 'Get a room' and 'Not near the food'." At this, Heather lets out a low, bark like laugh, which is rough from crying. However, it's a genuine laugh, and her slight shaking ceases. "Then we'll get creepy knife-chucking Locke and go find those bastards. He'll pull some mystic hoodoo-warrior shit and we'll get Walt back." Heather smiles, but it's grim—her eyes unfixed and staring past him.

Sawyer can see her make a conscious effort to bring her mind back to focus, and then he is surprised to see the shadow of a smirk there.

"Locke will be glad to know you're alive."

"Why's that?" At his question, Heather snorts, looks away, as if embarrassed—capturing his interest perfectly, and he is happy to see that though her eyes still appear to be watering, they are away from the sobbing.

"I told him that if you died, I'd kill him." She looks back to him, smirk growing to a small, tired smile. "It may have been slightly more colorful than just that, though." She scratches her head, while Sawyer lets out an amused chuckle of his own, though he's also gauging her seriousness, which is hard to determine in the bad lighting. "Jack wasn't, uh, very pleased."

"You actually did then. In front of the Doc, even."

"In front of everyone," Then, she licks her lips, looks at him, and what he sees doesn't scare him, but it does chill him. "At gunpoint."

"You're not joking." She looks to ground again, more in shame than embarrassment this time. His tone becomes deeper: "Were you serious?"

"I-"

"_Were you serious?_"

"Yeah. I was." Sawyer whistles low through his teeth, wondering how he's supposed to feel about this. Did it mean that she was dedicated to him, or did it make her insane?

"You're going to have something to answer for when we get back." She shrugs. "Why Locke? Because of Boone?"

"Yeah. Something like that."

"Something?"

"He… he thinks we're like each other. He thinks this island is heaven-sent. He thinks I'll… come around or something. That he understands me." Locke of course had never directly came out and said any of this, but that was the thing about Locke. She could tell. And the fact that she could _tell_ that he was thinking it didn't make it any better, because it only helped to prove whatever point he thought he was making.

"Does he?"

"No. He's the insane one." _But he isn't the one waking up in fits, and holding others at gunpoint, telling them he'll kill them,_ she thinks. Sawyer refrains from voicing his thoughts, though she can tell he's thinking along the same lines. "That's my story and I'm sticking to it," Heather says, and the too of them lower their heads, closer together. Somehow, here by the fire, far away from camp, not to mention the bullet wound, the setting is intimate, as if they were in bed in the small hours before daybreak, chatting like lovers between plush sheets.

"Sawyer?" She is more serious now, and the crying has stopped.

"Yeah sweet thing?" Heather smiles at this, braces herself.

"I… I woke up screaming. Charlie says I was screaming for Walt… and someone named James." She looks at him, wincing in preparation, waiting for some kind of retaliation.

"That so now?"

"It's safe. They think I'm nuts anyway, right?"

"How long have you known then?"

"Probably since the day with Walt. I never looked for it though. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry." He sighs. "It's not your fault." Then, looking at her, gauging her in the way she remembers from when they first met. "So, why do you keep calling me Sawyer then? If you know, well, my real name I guess you'd call it." Heather licks her lips, thinks over this for a moment.

"Because I think you need to own it—what happened to you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You took the name of the guy who… who killed your parents. A therapist would have a field day with that one." She gives him a wan, weary smile. "You felt like you became what you hated. I think you need to face that-"

"You think I haven't?" Though she can tell that neither of them is in the mood for fighting, there is a challenge in his voice.

"No. You're still running from it. You don't want to face it, because you're afraid that there isn't anything else to you but… but Sawyer."

"Well thanks for the analysis," He quips, and she knows it's a sore topic for him. However, after a few moments of silence, his head inclines toward her, and she looks up. "So what do you think?"

"About Walt?" She asks, concerned. He shakes his head, doesn't meet her eyes, stares at the fire instead.

"No. About… forget it."

"Do I think you're more than what you've made out of yourself? That you can change?" She's watching him closely, but he doesn't really answer her, and she takes that as a yes. "Yeah. I do. I don't truck with lost causes, if that's any consolation." She smiles, but doesn't get one out of him. She lifts herself, scoots closer to him, side by side—this way she slings an arm around him, with her head resting against his uninjured shoulder. "We are all more than the worst things we've done in our lives, Sawyer."

"You don't know half of the things I've done," He grits out, but she doesn't move. She's heard this before, and more than a couple times from him. _You're just hiding behind it, _she wants to say. _You say it because you're afraid that you might not be any better than what you've done—but you are._

"Maybe not. They aren't mine to live with. But I'll be here, whenever you decide you wanna try to sort it all out." The sun is not too far from rising, and Heather feels a deep cold in her stomach, knows that she's going to have to face Michael again, about heading back to camp first. She begins to brace herself, construct her days worth of armor.

"How'd you do it, anyway? Get us here?" Sawyer asks, and Heather enjoys the sensation of his voice vibrating through his chest, into her.

"Remember how I said that if you lost my solar powered battery pack I'd swim out there and kick your ass?" She smiles, begins to stretch while sitting. "Well, I'll save the latter for after we get back to the caves. I'm not evil enough to beat up on a guy who took a bullet-"

"Didn't answer my question."

"I know. I don't have an answer. I just did." Heather stares off over the water, to the horizon, where the sun is just coming up. She watches as Jin gets up, stretches a bit, and goes to Michael—he puts a hand on the man's shoulder, and then with a gentle word, walks towards the jungle, probably to relieve himself. She doesn't think anything of it, continues to watch as the water changes to an ocean of fire under the sun being born into the day. "I just said to myself: I'll move heaven and earth for him. And I did." Sawyer hangs his head for a minute, then stands—slow from the pain in his arm, and offers her his good hand. She takes it, but doesn't put much of her weight in it.

"I don't know anything about heaven missy, but that was fair impressive."

Suddenly, there is the sound of Jin yelling, and the three on the beach whirl, see the man come running out from the jungle. He's screaming in Korean, but it's obvious that something has happened, and that he's running from something. He trips, and Heather instinctually runs forward to help him up, even as he seems to be trying to tell the rest of them to run.

"Others!" Is the only thing she makes out as she tries to pull the man back to his feet, and then there is something blocking the morning light over her and-

-and she can hear the cracking sound of something connecting with the back of her skull, and then the distant feel of the sand against her cheek.


	29. Wake Up

"You're gonna cry, cry, cry and you'll cry alone,  
When everyone's forgotten and you're left on your own."  
Johnny Cash

**Chapter Twenty-Seven**

"Augh!" Heather awakens in pain, the wind knocked out of her as she is tossed into the pit—more painful for Michael and Jin, who she lands on. They are relatively quick to come to their senses, and Michael wastes no time in calling for his son. Then, with a ferocity she might not have thought possible of the man, he backs her to one of the corners.

"This is your fault!" She is sprayed with spittle as he rages in her face. "If we had left last night, we wouldn't have-" His shouts are cut short but a grunt of pain, when Heather brings her knee up hard and fast, directly into his crouch. The movement was more on impulse than anything else, and partially because she knows that if Sawyer got involved in a tangle with Michael, the result would not be good for anyone. Michael's air rushes out of him quickly, surprised. _Cheap,_ Heather thinks to herself, but what was done was done.

"Stay out of my face, Michael. I want to save Walt as badly as you do, but I'm not going to get anyone else killed doing it." Michael stands straight again, makes a menacing move towards her, and Sawyer steps forward as well, woozy but pissed off. Jin, however, steps in between them—especially between Michael and Heather, and shakes his head.

"No. _No._"

"He's right, Michael. We can't afford this. There's no way we're getting Walt or getting back to camp if we're at each other's throats."

"Don't patronize me."

"Grow _up._ You're ten year old son is more mature than-"

"Don't you dare talk about-"

At which point the covering of the pit is lifted, and someone else is pushed in. Within the next few minutes the woman comes to, and immediately Heather is wary of her—just the way by the way she (Ana Lucia, they find out) looks at them. Then again, she could easily rationalize this: they don't know who each other are, so suspicions are to be expected, right?

Then the woman asks about Sawyer's gun… and Heather knows. Knows cold—this is a trap, in more than the literal, hole in the ground sense. However, she can't exactly pounce, scream, "She's not telling us the truth!" can she? After all, if it's a trap, and this woman doesn't know that Heather knows it is, that gives her the leg up on the situation. Though trying not to be overtly obvious about it, Heather watches Ana Lucia closely, particularly her eyes and her hands. Ana Lucia seems to hardly even see her, and this sets the desire to foil whatever she plans she has even greater. _She's worried about the men first, and me lastly. Ironic._

Heather uses this to settle herself into a relatively blind spot, just as she sees Ana Lucia's muscles flex, hears the sound of the woman's fist rounding squarely on Sawyer's jaw-line.

"NOBODY MOVE!" Ana starts to shout, but Heather grabs the wrist of the hand holding the gun, and quickly forces it upward—with the heel of her free hand, she smashes the woman's nose. This isn't a fatal strike, but it could have been (if you forced the cartilage in the bridge of a person's nose up hard enough, it could be driven into their brain)—something she hopes Ana Lucia will recognize in the aftermath. Using the little bit of surprise-time left, Heather hits Ana with the full amount of her force, directly in her stomach. _Sucker-punches are cheap shots too,_ Heather thinks, as she wrenches the gun from Ana's grasp. _Too bad they're effective._

Ana makes a lopsided swing for Heather, who sidesteps and brings her elbow down hard between the woman's shoulder blades. When Ana rights herself, she is met with the barrel of the gun pointing all-too near her face.

"For the record," Heather spits, "You're acting is sub-par. And for every time you hit one of my boys here, I'm going to break one of your fingers. Consider this your only warning." Heather's temples are throbbing, and there is a ruthless glint to her eyes. "Back up. Now. Against that corner, if it does ya." Ana Lucia doesn't make a move at first, and the two of them bristle like caged lions. "I'm not _fucking_ with you, _chica._ Get the fuck back. None of them will shoot you, but you better believe I will."

With this, Ana steps back, murder in her eyes. Heather gestures for her to sit, and grudgingly, searching the dirt wall for a weapon (an action that doesn't escape Heather), she slides to the ground. The men are still stunned, first because Ana Lucia would have betrayed them, and second because Heather regained the upper-hand. The air in the hole is hot, dry.

"What's his name? The man up there."

"I'm not telling you shit." Heather sucks at inside of her teeth so a moment, and then laughs.

"I'm trying to be somewhat civil." Heather stops, raises her voice so the man outside can hear. "You hear that? This will be civil as far as you cooperate. Remember that." There is no response from Ana, just sullen silence. "Fine. Open your mouth." There is a look of surprise on the woman's face, which she quickly covers with stubborn opposition.

"Guess you're going to have to shoot me," She hisses through her teeth. Heather shifts her weight, seems to consider this.

"Heather…" There is a voice behind her: Michael's. It's at a perfect, worried pitch too. He's worried that if she kills this woman, he might loose information on Walt, but Ana Lucia may not understand that. All Ana needs to know, is that Michael (and presumably the others as well then) believe that Heather _is_ completely capable of shooting her in the face. The woman guards it well enough, but Heather can smell the fear on her.

"No. I'm not going to shoot you. Not for that, at least." Heather haunches down, around two feet away from the other woman, who is sitting flat on her ass, as Heather directed. "But if you don't open your mouth, I promise you'll be shitting all the tiny pieces of your teeth for the next two weeks. And I can imagine that would be one real son of a bitch, huh?" Again, Heather wonders if Ana Lucia is going to comply—after all, Heather isn't even sure if she's bluffing or not. There is a part of her that abhors true violence, thinks it's low and foul. Of course, there is the other side, which knows without a doubt that she will do everything in her power—even if it means breaking a defenseless person's jaw—if it means that she's protecting her group. This must be the side that shows most clearly, because Ana Lucia opens her mouth, and Heather, without hesitation, shoves the barrel of the gun a decent ways in.

"Don't gag. I won't stop to figure out if it's a trick or if you're actually choking. This would be one pathetic place to die, with your brains painting the dirt and all." It is a practical move, after all—there is no way, backed against a corner and sitting down, that Ana Lucia could possibly think any escape plan as functional. With three inches of steel alloy in her mouth, there was no hope of dodging a bullet, and any outcome would be messy. "Michael."

"Yeah?"

"You're going up first." Her voice is lowered, partly because she knows that the man outside will be listening intently. "Then Sawyer, and then Jin. I'll come up last."

"How do you plan to get us out of-" Sawyer starts, but her voice rises over his.

"I want you to lift this covering!" She shouts, nice and clear. "If I so much as think you're _breathing_ in a way that'll get one of my people hurt, I'll blow off the back of chica's cabeza, got it?"

"Yes. I understand." The accent is thick, deep. He, however, seems to willingly want to cooperate, and Heather tries not to show her relief, doesn't take her eyes off of Ana Lucia. The top to the trap rose, and then they could see the large man standing near the edge—he is holding a machete, though with the hilt upwards and the blade pointed away from the hole.

"I want you to drop that in here, mate. Nice and easy." There is a thud as the machete hits the sand. "Good. At least one of you is smart. Help my friend Michael up."

"Friend?" Michael asks, and Heather wants to smack him. If these other two know that there is dissension between them, it can only be used to hurt them. After the man helps Michael up, Heather starts again with the instructions.

"Sir, I'm going to ask you to stand about 10 feet back, but where Michael can still see you. Michael, confirm this." There is a sound of someone walking, and then Michael calls down that it's good. "Right. Jin." She looks to the side, catches the man's eyes. Gesturing with her head towards the machete, he picks it up. Then, she looks up. "Give to Michael." Michael, hearing this, reaches down, takes the machete. "That's for if there are any problems up there, Michael. Don't be afraid to use it."

"This feels like a goddamn circus," Sawyer growls, and Heather ignores him.

"You're going up next. Michael, help Sawyer up." Whenever Michael tosses down the rope, she calls Jin again. "Jin, Sawyer, up." With his injured arm, the man needs the extra help, but the process goes well enough. "Jin, go." Once the third man scrambles up, Heather looks back to Ana Lucia.

"Just you and me now. Civility, remember." Heather removes the gun, hates the sound it makes at it hits and scrapes against the woman's teeth. Keeping it leveled (Heather knows damn well how to hold and fire a gun, because there are certain self-defense things one learns in a foreign country which hates women, not to mention white women) at Ana Lucia's body mass, she backs to where the rope is, grabs hold of it with one arm. With Michael and Jin pulling, she is retrieved quickly, without hassle.

"That was good," Sawyer says low to her ear, but she doesn't turn to him, instead she watches the black man in the distant.

"We aren't out of the woods yet." _He's not going to like my next move, either,_ she thinks, and then calls out to the man standing in the distance: "You can come back over here now, sir." The large man walks slowly, cautiously towards her and the rest of the group. "What's your name?"

"Mister Eko," The man replies, and it takes Heather a moment to decipher something recognizable from it, and then she nods.

"And what's her name?" Heather asks, jerking her head back, indicating the pit.

"Ana Lucia." He hesitates for a moment, but answers.

"Mr. Eko. Right. I'm going to let you help her out of the pit-"

"What?" Sawyer and Michael both ask, then each wince, realizing that they did so in unison. It's almost comical, but Heather has a pounding, nauseating headache that is far too close to becoming a full-blown migraine. "You can't be serious," Sawyer continues, and she can see that he is honestly surprised. "You're going to get her out, whenever they knocked us out and threw us down there in the first place?"

"Yeah. Go ahead, Mr. Eko. Just don't try anything stupid." Mr. Eko moves toward the hole, and Sawyer starts forward. Heather cuts him off, and though Mr. Eko halts for a moment (eyes on Sawyer) she nods him on.

"Wait a goddamn second here!" Heather can see the man hesitate again, glance back at her, and then keep going. She reasserts her place in between Sawyer and Mr. Eko, and she can see that Michael also stands with Sawyer. Jin watches the situation with what appears to be vaguely concerned distance. "Hey, I told you-"

"Sawyer."

"What the hell do you think this is? A picnic?" He glares at her, but she holds her ground. "I can't believe you're actually helping them!"

"Sawyer's right," Michael adds. "How do we know they weren't the one's that took Walt? It might be another trick."

"We'd be dead by now. They're just as afraid of the Other's as we are-"

"I'm not letting this happen," Sawyer growls, and tries to side step her—Heather moves with him, and she can hear Ana Lucia getting out of the hole, and doesn't like that the two of them are directly behind her, but she isn't going to let Sawyer get his way.

"You don't have a choice."

"Excuse me?" His tone is stunned, but lethal. Michael is now watching her ever more warily. "Who the fuck died and made you queen?"

"I mean it Sawyer. Don't test me." Ana is getting to her feet, and Heather does not want to have to deal with this; now that Ana will know there is dissension in the ranks, it means Heather will have to display her authority.

"And why should I listen to you?" His face is close, drawn—but she can see an honest curiosity in it. No matter what sweet moments they have, Sawyer feels the incessant need to be a hardass.

"Because I'm the one with the gun." The jungle, at this, goes silent—they all seem to be holding their breath.

"You saying you're going to _shoot_ me?" Though he sounds mean enough, she can see something that is like hurt and confusion in it.

"No. Someone beat me to it, anyway." The dry humor of it doesn't go over well, and they all seem poised, still holding their breath. Her voice drops low, trying to be private between Sawyer and Michael, though she knows it isn't much use. "What I'm saying is that if it wasn't for me, this gun would be in miz Lucia's hot little hands. You're going to listen to me, because I obviously see things that you don't." The tension is thick enough to cut with a knife. "Since I did manage to earn us some kind of upper-hand here, I'm intent on keeping it: I'm also going to keep things going civilly, if at all humanly possible."

"Well, the boy's got a point," Ana taunts, hands on her hips. Heather turns, an eyebrow arched. "Why _are_ you playing nice cop?" _She'd know something about cops. That stunt down there? She probably either _is_ one, or she's met a few of them in her life._

"If things had gone your way, we'd be at your mercy at the bottom of that hole. I'm trying to do for you what I'd hope you'd have done for us."

"How sweet. The golden rule." But Heather can see that Ana Lucia is thinking this over, getting a feel for where she stands. "Don't think I'll forget you putting that fucking gun in my mouth."

"Oh, don't worry. If anything, I'm hoping you won't." She offers back, not sour as Ana is, but sharper, more cutting.


	30. Strike Two

"It's the devil I know or the devil I don't."  
The Clarks

**Chapter Twenty-Eight**

"So, you all were on a raft?" Ana asks, sounding skeptical, but Heather can tell that she more or less believes it—or at least believes that if this is their story, they are sticking to it.

"Yes." Heather replies. Michael and Sawyer know better than to make a fuss about this. Heather had taken the initiative in telling the story, as she opted towards generosity, explaining the situation as best she could to Ana Lucia and Mr. Eko, as well as a woman named Libby, who Mr. Eko had retrieved from not far off, where she more or less had been stationed by Ana. For all intents and purposes, Michael and Sawyer seem to understand why Heather is telling the story as if she were on the raft as well. After all, it boded better than trying to explain her true involvement.

"And these… Others, they took your son?"

"Walt," Michael responds, nodding.

"And then they destroyed your raft."

"Hold on," Heather raises her hand—the one without the gun in it. "Why are you acting so incredulous?" She is watching Ana Lucia with an intent gaze, who tenses at being called into question. "You're acting as if you have no idea who these Others are, or could be."

"You think I do?" The remark is biting, as if Heather is implying more than she really is by asking. Mr. Eko remains silent, but Heather can easily see the cool intelligence at work behind his eyes. The other woman, Libby, appears anxious, though she is trying to control it. They are all sitting in a loose circle, not far from the pit itself: one group of survivors on one side, the others opposite.

"I know you do." Now, 6 pairs of eyes turn to her, Jin's more following the rest. "Oh, come on," She responds, more so chiding her own group that anything. "The first thing you did when you saw us was had Mr. Eko here beat us unconscious."

"My apologies." This is the first thing he has said during the discussion, and Heather can see Sawyer moving towards some witty comment or another.

"No. I don't blame you-" She nods, but turns her hand palm up, in an accepting gesture.

"You don't?" Sawyer asks, sneering though the question.

"No. That's how I know that you know about the Others. If you didn't, why would your first reaction be violence? You would have cheered us, hailed us, brought us in with open arms after 40 some ugly days on an island. Instead you drug us into a hole."

"Get to the point." Ana is curt, but Heather knows that this is because she has highlighted the flaw in Ana's attempt to not let on more than she can.

"The point is, you know. You know, and you're scared shitless." Then, something occurs to her, and she asks, "How many survivors from the back were there?"

"23." The response is instantaneous, from Libby. There are two beats where Heather can feel the blood churning in her ears. She can see the fear in the blonde woman's eyes, and flashes of Ethan, or Ethan's handiwork on the beach, pulsate through her mind.

"How many now?"

"Why the fuck do you want to know!" Ana starts, standing up fast, infuriated. Mr. Eko tries to grab her wrist, but she jerks it away. Heather rises, gun held tight, stares straight into Ana's eyes. They are fairly evenly matched in height, but Heather is lankier, with less resounding muscle mass. If anything, Ana's reaction confirms what Heather has already begun to dread. Libby looks back and forth between the two other women, like a frightened animal.

"Answer the question, Libby. How many?" At this, Ana Lucia takes a swing at Heather, and the blow hits hard—Heather doesn't fall, but is obviously knocked off balance. The other woman hits again, a strike that knocks the wind out of her gut. _Deserved that one,_ Heather thinks, taking it. She takes the next blows, focuses only on the gun tight in her hand. Her thoughts go loose, and she lets them—with each shock of pain, Heather thinks of Walt, of losing him. Maybe there is a masochist in her, because she does not fight back immediately. Michael, out of the rest of them, seems to sympathize with this, maybe knows why Heather is letting the shit get knocked out of her.

Sawyer has gotten to his feet, and his yells are lost in Libby's yells are lost in Jin's Korean yells (while he waves the machete that he has been given control over). Michael and Mr. Eko are primarily trying to stop Ana, but the woman elbow's Michael sharply in the throat when he tries to take hold of her. Mr. Eko stops to help him first.

Heather loses the fight to stay on her feet, crumples. _You can't let this happen, you know,_ something utterly calm and resolved in her reasons. _You have to get Walt, and this is just wasting time. Hurt yourself for it later._ She slowly gets to her knees, and Ana kicks her back down to her side.

"Give me the gun."

Heather struggles to right herself again: "Fuck. You." Another kick in the ribs, and she goes down again. _She isn't kicking me half as hard as she could. She isn't breaking my ribs._ This means something, but Heather isn't quite sure what.

"I'm not asking again. Either you give it to me now, or I'll take it from you." Heather is leaning forward, on her knees but not straight, clutching her stomach and sides, gun still fiercely gripped in one hand. Jin and Sawyer are close, but Mr. Eko and Michael are still obstructing the path. Heather makes as if thinking for a moment, and then, hawks back and spits straight into Ana Lucia's lowered face. "Bitch," The woman's hisses, and then brings up her foot to kick Heather in the face.

Heather moves faster—Ana was focusing on power, finally intent on doing real damage, and in so, gave up some of the speed. Heather grabs the woman's ankle (not to mention slamming the side of the steel plated gun into the bone there), and wrenches her entire body up and to the side, pulling back. Ana Lucia falls back with a surprised grunt, and within moments, Heather brings her elbow down, square against the woman's jaw—while dazed, Heather twists the woman over as best she can, pushing her arm up behind her back, until Ana Lucia lets out a harsh, higher-pitched cry of pain.

Holding her arm in the high, awkward place behind her back, Heather makes sure that Ana can feel the barrel of the handgun placed flush against her head. Heather's face is bloody, but it's mostly from a busted lip and a cut right under her eye—the rest of Ana Lucia's hits had mainly been to her body.

"That's strike two. You might fight harder, chica, but you aren't very bright are you? I'm protecting me and mine, _just like you._ If you freak out on me again, _I am going to shoot you._ Do you understand me?" There is no reply, and Heather pushes the woman's arm higher up behind her back, until she is sure that any further, and it will break. Ana let's up a piercing yelp, and Heather can hear Eko start behind her, but Jin waves his machete at the bigger man, shouts something hostile in Korean. "I want a motherfucking answer!"

"Yes! YES!"

"Good." Heather takes Michael's hand, helping her up; Jin still has the blade of the machete tilted toward Mr. Eko. "Jin." The man looks to her, and Heather nods, both a thank you and relieving him of it. Then, she lets out an enormous sigh, one that sounds tired and near-exhausted even to her, and she can feel it all the way into her spine. They all look at her, and she feels that Eko is the one seeing her the most for what she is—Heather doesn't know whether to appreciate this, or be wary of it. He steps back from Jin, and then helps up Ana, who briskly tries to push him away, but then lets him.

"Six." Heather looks over at Libby, who has stepped forward. Her voice is shaking, but grows more confident. "There are six of us now." The news hits Heather like a freight train, visibly affecting her. She teeters for a moment, and Michael takes her elbow, keeps her up. Sawyer watches, but doesn't move from his spot.

"I want to see the rest of you." Heather says.

"Why?" The question does not come from them, but from Sawyer.

"Because they're coming back with us."

There is dead silence for a moment, and then Ana: "And what makes you think that's going to happen?"

"We've lost a handful, but only one was killed by… one of them."

"Not for lack of trying," Sawyer interjects, and Heather looks at him with a stark hostility—she is tired, pushed to the edge, and is done with putting up the fight.

"Can do you some simple math for me, Sawyer? Just let's try this. All of you." Her eyes are glaring, meets every one of them in turn, even Jin. "They had 22 people. Now they have six. That's a little over a quarter. _Just about three out of every four people here are gone._ Only one of ours has been directly killed, though there were two attempted murders, and two abductions-" Michael looks as if he's going to make a remark about this, but Heather just holds up a finger. "The choice seems pretty clear to me. You can come with us, live in some form of civilization, or you can stay here and wait to be picked off."

"Don't act like you know what's best for my people," Ana says, but there isn't any true viciousness to it. In fact, Heather can tell that the woman is weighing the option in her mind. _And it's one she would immediately take, if I hadn't been the one to present it._

"Me and mine, remember?" Heather responds coldly. "I'm not campaigning, and I'm not going to drag anyone. But like I said, the facts speak for themselves."

"And why the hell do you care?" This, however, is a good question. Heather stops for a moment, at a loss.

"Because caring is what makes us human," She responds at last. It's clichéd, perhaps, but still true. "I have priorities, and one of them is getting Sawyer back to camp as quickly as possible, and then going to find Michael's son—but I can't let you all rot out here, just waiting for the axe to fall. Blame it on retaining some form of a conscious."

"That's what gets you killed," Ana says, but Heather can tell that she is giving in, despite her obvious displeasure with it. _At least she can still think of what is best for hers._

"Hasn't yet," Heather retorts. Personally, she's thinking, _And I'd rather that be the case, than hiding from it._ The two eye each other like rivaling predators, and then Ana Lucia looks away.

"There's only two more. Cindy and Bernard. It won't take long." Ana's eyes meet hers again, with something fierce burning in them—with Heather can sense the definite wariness and hostility there, she sees that that isn't all of it: what she's seeing is hope. And for the briefest moment, there's almost something like _gratitude_. Whether this is for the option, or for taking the choice away from her—or if it's just her imagination fucking with her—Heather doesn't know. It's gone before she can be sure.

For the next mile or so, Heather and Ana stay close. They do not talk, and there is a certain harsh tension to them, like the rough, solid edges of two tectonic plates grinding against one another (waiting, perhaps, for another earthquake to cause).

But they walk, more or less, side by side.


	31. The Bunker

"She said I don't know if I've ever been good enough,  
I'm a little bit rusty, and_ I think my head is caving in._  
And I don't know if I've ever been really loved,  
By a hand that's touched me."  
Matchbox Twenty

**Chapter Twenty-Nine**

"Stop talking," Ana snaps at Sawyer, who had started a small conversation with the stringy blonde woman named Libby.

"Make me, cupcake-"

"Stop talking." Heather's tone is less biting, but somehow more of a command. Sawyer looks surprised at this, as does Michael—Libby simply maintains that same jittery nervousness that has characterized all her movements. Heather sees Ana Lucia give her a side-ways glance, also perhaps wondering why the woman would stick up for her. "They know the land better than we do. If she says we're not talking, then we aren't."

The rest of walk, which does not carry on much further, is in absolute silence—though Heather knows well enough that this is partially because Sawyer is not only exhausted, but sulking. One or the other might not have stopped his little quips, but both together seemed to shut him up.

They come upon a door that when opened from the inside, leads down a tunnel. For a moment, Heather feels a dull fear upon seeing it, which quickly rises to a scream of terror inside her mind. Something about it makes her feel absolutely sick, and she sees that this doesn't escape Ana, who quietly records the fact without saying anything. Heather has the feeling that if people are born with special 'immune systems' to fight off all this psychic-emotional crap, than hers is being chipped away. And the last time it crashed…

…well, she had woken up to the sensation of pieces of her soul being sucked out, her darker memories playing over and over because some kind of leech demon had crawled inside of her.

Regardless, she followed Ana, with only the slightest hesitation. She forced her legs forward, and tried to clear her mind, to shake off the heavy, disgusting feeling that settled down over her body. Once in the main room, Heather felt the oddest, most obscure sense of (not quite déjà vu) but such _familiarity._ Then her eyes adjusted enough to the low lights that she could clearly see a symbol on the back wall—in fact, it was on a lot of places, now that she could see.

A low, hissing gasp sounded through her lips and locked teeth, and she immediately, involuntarily, turned around and squeezed her eyes shut hard.

_Locke!Kate!JACK! Walt says NO!_ Then: _4-8-15-16-23-42-108!_

Over and over the numbers came, with the feeling like everything was turned upside down, and every more disturbingly—inside out.

"Heather," Sawyer said, his voice dry and low—he tries to get to his feet from the sitting position he's in, but Michael bounds up and gets to her first.

"It was about Walt, wasn't it? _What are they doing to him!_" He takes her shoulders, doesn't hurt her, but his grip is firm.

"We have to get back. Soon." Heather's face is unbelievably pale, even in the torchlight.

"Get her out of here! Can't you see that's what's doing it!" Sawyer shouts, tottering towards them. "Get her out of here!"

Heather feels herself being lifted by strong arms, and is carried out into the dying sunlight. "Hey!" She hears Ana call from behind, but the force moving her didn't stop. "Hey, stop! What's going on?"

When Heather comes too, water has been splashed into her face, and she sees that she had been carried out by Mr. Eko, who was dampening a cloth and holding it to her skin. _Why does that name seem so familiar?_ Maybe if her brain wasn't as scrambled as it was, she would have been able to put her finger on it. Something from before… before the island (and while thinking this, a nasty, tiny little part of her just laughs—there _was_ no before the island, didn't she know that by now?) She can feel how feverish she is, and her eyes feel swollen, her tongue thick. She tries to sit up too quickly, and immediately regrets it as bright violently purple splotches dot her vision.

"Not so quick," Eko advises her in his strange dark accent—one that she recognizes as Nigerian, from her previous life, which tickles at that memory that suggests that she's met him before, but isn't enough to dislodge it—his hand lowering her back down. She sees Sawyer limp out of the camp, and understands that it hasn't been so long since she went under. He is supported mostly by Jin, and the concern on both of their faces makes her feel sick to her stomach.

"There's something you're not telling us about your little friend here," Ana's voice rises, echoing out of the bunker serving as their camp. Heather hears Michael answer something sharp, but his voice is lost under hers.

"What happened?" An older man asks, whom she assumes is Bernard, peering down at her—but before she can attempt to respond, Sawyer shoves him over in a lopsided way, drops hastily to his knees. He lets out a small hiss of pain as he pulled her to him with his good arm (something that Eko objects to, but doesn't move to stop). The world spins again, but the closeness of him helps settle her.

"Are you okay?" He's close enough for her to hear the pain in his voice, and she can feel his bullet wound as if it were her own. His hair is plastered to his face with sweat, and his cheeks are gaunt and pale. _You're sweet, but you'll leave. You'll leave._ It's a chilling thought, and she isn't really sure where it comes from, but it upsets her more than the previous vision.

"Don't worry about me," she grumbles into him, and she can feel him react to it. _He's afraid he's been doing too much worrying about himself._ "You keep up, and I'll do my part." Her cheek rested against his for a second, both of them with skin so hot it was nearly burning up. "You aren't getting rid of me anytime soon, cowboy."

"How _sweet._" Ana drawled, tone vicious. "Now you want to tell us what the fuck that was?"

"Leave her alone-" Michael starts, but stops as he sees Heather rising to her feet, stabilizing herself. Eko offers a large hand, but lets it lower when Sawyer appears ready to bite it off of his arm.

"I needed some air."

"Bullshit."

"Get your people together. We're not waiting much longer."

"I'm no going anywhere until you tell me what the hell is going on!" Heather sighs.

"I'm exhausted. I felt like I couldn't breathe. I have panic attacks and haven't had any medication for about a week now after it ran out." _All these lies are going to crash down around my ears sooner or later_, she thinks and her only consolation is that it may be later rather than sooner. _As long as I get Sawyer back in time._ Sawyer gives her a desperate look, as if he's seeing something new and dangerous, something he's afraid might infect him all over again. Was that what Heather was? A cure for the ailing, but a poison to the healing? Not a comforting thought.

"You satisfied now, chica?" Sawyer takes Heather's nickname and uses it himself, covers her story, and she only hopes Michael will catch on.

"I don't buy it," Ana says, but there is doubt in her voice. _Because she doesn't know _what_ the hell to think of me at all._ "Why would they put a woman on a raft in the middle of the ocean if she has panic attacks?"

"Because it would be worse to keep her back at camp waiting for him." Michael chimes in, and Sawyer drops his head a bit—the action adds impossible validity to the stoy, because the guilt is all too real.

"Sweet," Ana repeats, but the sarcasm shows that she's willing to accept it for the time being. Then she shifts her weight, and her tone changes: "So when are we getting out?"

"Thought you weren't interested," Heather responds, recomposing herself. Of course she might as well be poking a hornet's nest with a short stick, but part of her just wants to get a dig into Ana Lucia. _Dharma_, she thinks. _That's what it said inside that symbol._ But what did 'Dharma' mean? _Looked like some kind of company logo._

"I never said that."

"We need to rest. We'll go when the sun comes back up. Shouldn't be too long now." Ana Lucia judges this, and then nods. _It will give her time to think, get her things and her people together._ They walk back into the bunker, and this time Heather knows what to expect, but it feels like there are whispers all around her, coming from the walls, but she does her best to ignore them—hadn't some of the survivors back at the camp said that they heard the same thing while in the woods?

However, she manages to keep the panicky feeling in her gut under some kind of control, as long as she doesn't look at the symbol.


End file.
